


The Pursued and the Pursuing

by irisbleufic



Series: The Still Point of the Turning World [1]
Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Queer Character, Ending Fix, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Historical Accuracy, Intersex, Intersex Character, Lesbian Character of Color, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-12 03:31:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The past is both behind us and ahead of us, patiently looming [ . . . ]</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Pursued and the Pursuing

I think that you will have surmised by now exactly why Jay Gatsby had to die.  The matter of what I've written elsewhere is by no means a small one, and I will not attempt to justify it here. Suffice it to say that the intersection of art and expediency left me with very little say in the matter; until such time as evidence might prove certain parties exonerated, it seemed wisest to lay Gatsby's ghost to rest.

Even now—in the clear, in this perfect cyclone's eye of a second chance—we've made mistakes both monumental in scope and undeniable in consequence. Presently, I find myself exiled to the greenhouse with a typewriter over the matter of some ill-chosen words. It's swiftly coming on winter, and Boston is no warmer this side of December than Saint Paul.  Return with me to the rustle of leaves, to that thinning red spiral ever downward, for it's here that our paths converge in what was once a wood and, irrevocably, meet.

The chauffeur, the butler, the gardener, and I had scarcely got Gatsby across the threshold, his pneumatic mattress serving as a sort of makeshift gurney, when to our astonishment it became clear that there was something resembling life in him yet.

"What's this, old sport?" he muttered, hand slick with blood and chlorine at my wrist.

But for my quick reflexes, we might have dropped him out of sheer shock. I ordered the others to help me lay him aside in the hall, and then told the butler to ring for an ambulance. Our burden thus set down, I found myself abruptly the sole keeper of it.

" _Nick_ ," Gatsby attempted again, undoubtedly finding that lone syllable easiest.

"Now, don't try to talk," I told him, some far corner of my mind beating wildly against panic, and held down his arms as gently as I could. "You've been shot. The man who did it's dead, seems to have done himself in after the fact, so don't trouble yourself with that. You've got to look at me, focus. Help's coming, do you understand?"

Gatsby nodded at me and gave my fingers a faint squeeze, his glaze-eyed expression bordering on the kind of wonder I felt at the mere fact of our disjointed conversation. "But Daisy's not," he said in a moment of diamond clarity, struggling for breath.

"No, Jay," I agreed quietly, although by then he'd lost consciousness. "She's not."

I don't know what kind of miracle got him to Huntington Hospital alive, but I'll sooner credit the ambulance team than my unsteady presence at his tubed, taped, and antiseptic-doused side. They'd cut his ruined bathing-suit to shreds. On arrival, I was ushered out of the ambulance after the swarm of paramedics with no small amount of befuddlement; one nurse after another questioned me on the bizarre circumstances of Gatsby's injury in a sweltering hot waiting room, where I spent an uneasy evening and subsequent interminable night with only the dour-faced graveyard shift for company. At some point, I must have slept, because it was Owl-Eyes who shook me awake.

"They say he's out of danger now, but not by much," Owl-Eyes said. "Poor son-of-a-bitch."

Blearily, I inquired as to how the devil he had got there. Apparently the constant stream of reporters from Gatsby's front gate up to Huntington was all it had taken; he'd turned up for a party and instead found a media circus in full, lurid swing.

"You don't suppose he's got family?" asked the man with owl-eyed glasses. "Parents?"

"Even if they're still alive," I said truthfully, "I'd have no idea where to look."

Owl-Eyes bravely clapped my arm. "Go home. Have a bath and some hot food."

We shared a taxi back to West Egg, in which neither one of us spoke any more.

I staggered past several unfamiliar cars clogging the lane and up my front steps, only to find the Finn cursing indecipherably at a gaggle of men with cameras and notebooks. Pegging me for someone with a far better grasp of English, they crowded around in a greedy clamor for news of Gatsby. Wilson's fate was boringly indisputable.

"What, the man from next door?" I said, at the end of my tether. "He's dead."

They left disappointed, and, once they'd gone, I rang the hospital. Nurses and doctors, perhaps, could be counted upon for a measure of confidentiality, but I didn't doubt that the lower staff denizens could be counted upon to propagate rumors like wildfire.

With Gatsby's privacy assured insofar as it dubiously could be, I collapsed and slept.

On waking fifteen hours later, I found that my Finn had left a cold breakfast tray on the floor and that she had piled several scraps of paper with reporters' contact details beside it. I took the quickest, coldest shower of my life, dressed with an aimless lack of preference, and ate the two savorless hard-boiled eggs on my way out the door. Back at the hospital, in the dull blue waiting room, I found the gardener and the chauffeur seated on two of the wooden chairs. They regarded me contemptuously.

"Who sent you here?" I demanded, not quite trusting these men of Wolfsheim's the way I'd trusted Gatsby's servants, never mind that they'd helped me haul Gatsby from the pool and get him inside the house. "He's not family," I told them. "He pays you."

"No," the chauffeur corrected me, "it's _Boss_ as pays us. And if Boss says we're to look after his investment for him, why, that's what we does, no questions asked."

"Boss says this un's all right," leered the gardener. "Says he's _special_. So fine he'd take him home to meet his own dear old mother, even, rest her soul. Let him go in."

"I don't know," said the chauffeur. "I smell a gold-digger, and a rather queer one, too, what with how he's always hanging about. Queer as a three-dollar bill, if you ask me."

I walked on by them hastily, damn the consequences, and asked the nurse on duty where they'd put Gatsby. She said she recognized me from the day before as his next-of-kin; she also told me that she didn't trust the two in the waiting room ( _or_ the kyke who'd turned up as accompaniment) as far as she could throw them.

"Your cousin is in here," she said, opening the door in front of which we'd stopped. "This is dreadful," she continued, "but we didn't get his name, what with the rush for surgery. Those men out there tell me one thing, but I'd rather hear it from you."

I hadn't got over my dismay at Gatsby having had a lucid enough moment to claim I was his relative, and part of me supposes that may account for what I said next. "James Gatz," I told her, and then went inside without any further hesitation.

Gatsby, grey-faced, was propped up slightly in the monstrous bed, a man comprised more of tubes and gauze than of flesh. I made a start for his side, but the nurse got there first, pushing an impersonal clipboard under his nose. She wrote something on it, and a look of disgust crossed Gatsby's wan features. He flinched from her piercing green gaze and signed. Once the girl in white was gone, he fixed his eyes on me.

"Look here, old sport," he murmured with a weak, ghastly smile. "Why'd you do that?"

"You were James Gatz once, and you can be James Gatz again. Please don't be offended, but you're easily lost in a crowd. Your guests hardly ever recognized you, myself included. I'm trying to save your skin. The newspapers are going crazy."

" _You're_ not easily lost," he said bitterly. "No, not you. People pay you attention whether you want it or not. It's something in your eyes. You watch with impunity." Unsettled, I thought of T.J. Eckleburg and brushed off his belabored earnestness.

"You're in quite a lot of discomfort. I'm sorry, Jay. It must be the painkillers talking."

"It's the second time you've called me that," he wheezed curiously, "in as many days."

"Jay is as fitting a nickname for James as any," I said in my defense, but looked away.

"Look, Nick, why don't you sit down," he said, with considerable effort. "Stay a while."

"I won't leave you this time," I promised him, and pulled a chair over next to his bed.

"I don't begrudge you the other morning," he said, his hollow eyes drifting shut. "After breakfast, I mean. You had to go to work. Why aren't you there now?"

"Because it's Saturday," I said, hoping to cheer him. His deathlike smile was better than none. "And you're here. Even with the windows open, that house is too empty."

"That reminds me," said Jay—James, whatever he might become—with hesitation. "I need to ask a favor of you, and it shan't be pleasant. It's to do with the house."

"I'll look in on it for you, of course. It's no trouble. I'm more than happy to do it."

"It's to do with my things," Jay said, licking his dry lips. "My clothes and suchlike."

"You won't be needing those shirts of yours for a while," I said. "I wouldn't worry."

"You don't understand," Jay pressed on, voice harsh, exhausted. "It's no longer mine."

By this point, I was certain the drip had him talking nonsense. I took hold of his hand.

"What's not yours? The shirts? Jay, they're yours. From England, bought and paid for."

"The house," he said. "Wolfsheim's to sell it, you see. Couldn't be helped."

A dozen half-heard phonecalls between Detroit and New York had taken their toll.

"Oh," I said. "I see. That's . . . well, that's terrible. Of course I'll fetch your things."

Jay nodded faintly and gave my fingers a sharp squeeze, already drifting off to sleep.

"Thanks, old sport," he murmured with delirious gratitude. "Please do. _Nick_."

I wasn't sure what to make of our newfound first-name basis, but it warmed me in the midst of those cold, cruel ashes that had settled around.

Seemingly touched, the green-eyed nurse peered in at us, her gaze dreamlike through the crack in the door.

 

 

* * *

 

 

I stayed with Gatsby—with _Jay_ , I repeated to myself—until Sunday evening. He slept most hours, but in between times he was alert, if groggy. I read to him from the sad selection of magazines and broadsheets the nurse had brought in from the waiting room. I could tell she felt sorry for us, but I wasn't completely certain as to why. Wolfsheim's people traded shifts out in the waiting room, leaving us to ourselves.

On Monday after work, I enlisted the aid of my Finn in ferrying as many of Gatsby's personal effects to the cottage as space would permit. Wolfsheim's people didn't prevent us from coming and going; it was, as the gardener and Wolfsheim himself had said, that something in my bearing or in my intrinsic quality of character, whatever that _was_ , that had got me off the hook. As an afterthought, I went to Jay's bedroom in order to fetch the heavy gold-plated toilet set, but it was nowhere in evidence.

The butler handed me a telegram on my way out and told me I wasn't to come back.

The telegram was from one Henry C. Gatz, an urgent inquiry into his son's condition. He wanted to know if his boy was dying or already dead (the papers couldn't seem to reach a consensus on this matter), if he ought to come as soon as possible. I took the telegram over to the hospital that night and showed it to Jay. I didn't have the heart to tell him about the toilet set.

"Respond to this for me tomorrow," Jay said, handing the telegram back to me. "Tell him not to trouble himself. Tell him I'll come and see him as soon as I'm well."

"Of course," I said, tucking the piece of paper inside my jacket. "I'll go with you."

Inscrutably, Jay frowned to himself. "I don't know about that. He's not sociable."

"It's not meeting him that interests me," I said, uncertain as to why I found such a weighty confession so effortless. "It's being with you. I said I wouldn't leave."

"I appreciate your dedication, but I couldn't ask you to drop everything for my sake."

An awkward silence hovered between us, but I was determined not to let it settle. "Let's be honest. When they let you out of here, you won't be in any shape for immediate travel. If you'd like to go home in the long run, I'm no one to stop you—" on those words, my throat caught "—but in the meantime you'll have nowhere to go. My place is small, but it's all I can offer. At least stay with me till you're on your feet."

Jay appeared to be considering my proposal, seemed to understand the weight of it.

"I haven't been left penniless. You could find us a better place, nothing extravagant."

Hearing him utter those words, I almost wanted to laugh out loud. Somehow, I didn't. "There's a second bedroom," I said. "I was originally meant to be renting with another fellow, but he took a job in Washington, D.C. at the last minute. I can't blame him."

"Nick," Jay said, visibly pained, "I appreciate your kindness, but I really don't—"

I left him and went outside for a cigarette, my head full of discordant thoughts. The green-eyed nurse was sitting on a bench, eating her sandwich in the transient light. She nodded to me, and a whorl of red hair escaped her cap. I sat down beside her and lit my cigarette, offering her a spare from Jay's engraved case. She declined.

"You're not his cousin, are you," she said. "I won't tell anyone. It'll be our secret." Her voice was everything Daisy's was not, and her directness reminded me of Jordan.

"It's difficult to make him see," I said. "He's free now, if he'd like to be."

"You remind me so much of my brother," said the nurse. "He died in the war."

"I was in the war," I replied, after several brooding puffs. "So was Jay."

"We all still are," said the nurse, and continued to eat her solitary meal.

I went back inside, past Wolfsheim's flunkies, and found Jay dozing. Pulling the chair closer to his bed, I sat down and leaned with both elbows on the mattress. He looked fragile like that, vulnerable, his heightened sensitivity laid bare for anyone who might wander into the room. I brushed the exposed underside of his wrist with my thumb, followed the tracery of veins up the pale, untanned skin there up to the crook of his elbow. I had wanted to know for the longest time what it would mean to touch him.

"Hello, old sport," he said, shaking off the thickness of sleep. "Listen, I didn't mean—"

"It's your grand, impossible dream," I said, "or it's me and the rest of your life."

Jay studied my fingers against his pulse-point, eyes suddenly grave and thoughtful.

"She won't call again," he said quietly. "I know that now. She's never coming back."

Electric shock; gravity. I held my breath, couldn't bring myself to look at him directly.

"I admire you because you cling to hope more fiercely than anything, but you can't—"

"But we _can_ repeat the past," he insisted. "Just a small piece of it, you understand, in order to pick up where it left off. There are some things we didn't do," he added. "Important things. Grand ones, as you've said. Things we should have done."

Without any further hesitation, then, I raised my head and looked him in the eyes.

"That's not an unreasonable premise, Jay. Where are you suggesting we should start?"

"At your house," he replied. "With the grass uncut and a broken clock on the mantel."

I fell asleep beside him in the chair that night with my hand curled around his arm.

 

 

 * * *

 

 

Another week later, the doctors said that Jay was doing fine. "Possible lung trouble later on, though, what with the puncture and the scar tissue now as it heals," one of them muttered to me, "so maybe see to it he lays off tobacco." Something told me he'd take the advice for what it was worth; he drank little enough as it was, so what difference would fewer cigarettes make? They agreed he could go home in a few days.

It was on the second day after this joint pronouncement that a story cropped up in the papers regarding a witness to Myrtle's death who'd never before spoken up. The source insisted that a woman had been driving the yellow car, and that the man in the passenger seat had been trying to stop her, but to no avail. I read the story to Jay, and we sat exchanging wordless glances in various dialects of melancholy until I finally said, "If they track her down, it's best we keep out of things. Let justice work."

Jay hadn't spoken since the part of the article recounting millionaire Jay Gatsby's untimely demise at the hands of the victim's husband, of how Myrtle's sister had defended this tragic stranger and for all intents and purposes cleared his name.

"Perhaps I ought not to have died," he said at length. "What do you think, old sport?"

"I think death suits you," I told him. "Besides, Jay Gatsby isn't dead to _me_."

The next afternoon, while Jay underwent a final battery of endless diagnostic tests, the Finn and I spent a few hours airing out the house, dusting, and tending to a number of other menial, but necessary affairs. The mattress in the spare room needed flipping, and it had never been bestowed with a proper set of bedclothes. I insisted that my own should have a change of linens, too, and if this struck my housekeeper as incongruous, she didn't mention it. She'd brought three white roses from somewhere and put them in a cut-glass carnival vase on the shabby dining-room table.

"He like flowers very _very_ , yes," she said approvingly to her impromptu handiwork. I didn't have the heart to tell her that hadn't been the point last time, but I supposed that, in his own way, Gatsby must enjoy flowers (to have gone to such trouble).

Just as I was getting ready to call a taxi—I had told Jay I'd collect him at five—a high-powered motor roared up in the lane. I peered out the kitchen window just in time to see the red-haired nurse emerge from one of Jay's former cars and help Jay out after her.

The man at the wheel was none other than the dubious chauffeur Wolfsheim had provided. I had expected our green-eyed girl would see Jay to the door, but I watched him see her back into the car. The chauffeur drove off.

I rushed to the front door to open it for him, but Jay, supported by a stylish walking-stick (adorned with gilt, a last gift from Wolfsheim), had already managed to get it open. I took his elbow on the threshold; from the good-natured amusement of his expression, he must have found the gesture preposterous. "Roses, old sport?" he said, out of breath, but in high spirits. "You shouldn't have."

"What should I have got instead?" I asked. "Tulips? Hyacinths? Jonquils?"

I led him along till we came to the hall. I showed him the tiny bathroom and his own room right beside it; his own clothing cramming every drawer (and still more neatly folded mounds of it atop the bureau and even on the floor) brought a dry smile to his lips.

"Where's your room, old sport?" he asked, jokingly, because in one step across the hall, we were there.

I pushed open the door, and we hovered on the threshold.  Jay leaned on his cane, considering the curtains, his lips parted.

"Jordan's a lovely young woman. You ought to have held onto that one. If not for her, I'd never have known."

"Known what?" I ventured, finding his change of subject distasteful. "That Daisy was my second cousin once removed? That I'd be so easily used?"

"That Daisy was your cousin," Jay agreed, genuinely perturbed, "but not the latter, Nick, _never_ the latter. I hadn't lied about recognizing your face. That was before I had a word with Jordan alone, before she told me who you are. We were in the war."

I nodded, wondering what had prevented me from remembering a glance at _him_. Perhaps he hadn't smiled during the war. If I'd seen him smile, I'd have remembered. "I didn't love her," I said defiantly. "I threw her over. What do you make of that?"

"Either you think she's rotten, too," Jay said simply, "or you prefer men." I didn't respond, thinking of my non-engagement, of the hopeful failure that was Mr. McKee, of the reason for my family's concern when I got back from Europe. "What torture I must have put you through," he sighed.

"Don't mock me," I snapped. "Whatever else you do, whatever else you may be, _don't_ mock me."

At some point during the conversation, I had drifted over to stand beside the bed. I'd been retreating from him progressively, and, progressively, he'd been drawing ever closer. He was standing unbearably close to me now, and I couldn't help but be intensely aware of the fine sheen of sweat that had formed across his forehead, of his hard, tanned body beneath the white flannel suit he'd borrowed from me for homecoming. Much to my surprise, we wore the same size now; he'd dropped some weight during his convalescence. Unthinking, I reached for his hand.

"Listen here, old sport," he said, lacing his fingers with mine. "There was this chap I knew in France, an English officer. The night before one of our worst engagements, none of us thought we were going to make it out alive. We'd made camp near the Brits. I thought that night would be the end of it, but given we both made it out alive, we caught up some months later at Oxford. He was engaged to marry a Shropshire girl, and I'd received a whole backlog of letters from Daisy." I clasped his hand all the tighter, felt the weight of several worlds lift from us both.

"There was a carpenter's son in one of the villages," I told him. "We made the best of what time we had, and that was longer than most wartime affairs. When the war ended, he begged me to stay; I wrote my family and said I wasn't coming home. I got a letter back saying my father's health had begun to decline. I left in a panic, promising I'd come back, and what did I discover in Saint Paul but my father in perfect health and a girl they'd arranged for me to meet. She was sweet enough. I wrote her letters for a while even when I moved out here," I sighed. "Rumors got out of hand. We were never engaged, but if my heart had been in it, we _ought_ to have been."

"And your young man from the village?" Jay asked with curious, moved intensity.

"My family's disapproval rolled me under," I said, ashamed. "He's married or working or dead, I suppose, or maybe he found another soldier."

Jay swallowed and nodded, and then held my hand up between us, about level with his chin. His eyes shone with fear, full of contrite, yet hopeful elation.  "Suppose we'd met in the war," he said, "rather than just passed by each other in some victory parade. Suppose there'd been no English officer and no French carpenter's son, no Daisy for me and no family for you. What then?"

"You _know_ what then," I said, determined, and reversed the action he'd so bravely begun. I drew his hand up to my mouth.

We were not perfect, not either one of us, with our boys lost in the war and our girls lost in fathomless expectations up to which we could not live. He was still weak, so divesting him of clothes perforce required care. He sat motionless in his underwear while I undressed for him, eyes shifting restlessly over what I'd revealed. There was a strange shyness in him as I climbed onto the bed; we kissed for a while before I pushed that brushed cotton down off his hips and pulled him to me.

There was a slowness about our movements that neither of us would have preferred in other circumstances, but even the fever-flushed press of his belly against me was enough.  The rain had started up again, a fierce and forgiving deluge, but for me there was no distraction except for the sounds of our close, quiet coupling in that unassuming bed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

As it turned out, Jay had retained sufficient funds that my notion of traveling till the air had cleared became a reality. We stayed on in the cottage for five or six weeks, until the Finn and her distaste for the second bedroom's disuse became unbearable.

Jay was back to his former strength by the time we left for Montréal, although he still winded easily, and he hadn't objected to a reduced smoking regime. We made love in hotel suites on the rue Sainte-Catherine and left for Québec City when we'd exhausted Montréal's charm. There, we walked cobbled streets and spoke horrible French, all the while realizing how much of an impression Europe had left on us both. One night, over _genever_ cocktails and a shared cigarette, I asked him if we could afford passage.

"Possibly, old sport," he told me, one arm thrown possessively over my side.

We left for London the next morning. Going out with a bang, we called it. He showed me Oxford, and then we crossed the Channel and I showed him the village where I'd met the carpenter's son. We stayed longest in the north, traveling from Lille to Honfleur to Deauville by car, and afterward to Mont Saint-Michel. We lit candles in our turret room and drank cider till the surf far below was a fantastical roar in our ears.

"I'm wild about you," I whispered against his cheek, loud enough for him to hear.

We left a month later when our joint finances looked somewhat sobering and I realized we'd need a place to live. From our departure point of Southampton, we discussed Chicago and ruled it out completely; our families' proximity would prove problematic. New York, too, was out of the question, and although Jay had a lingering fondness for points south, I wanted no part in a society that had in the long run led to such ruin.

"What about Boston?" I said. "You spent some time there, didn't you, as a sailor?"

"I was fond of it," Jay agreed. "If need be, I could turn my hand to sailing again."

"No," I told him. "I'll go back to selling bonds, this time without worrying over you every second of every day. Maybe I'll even prove good at it."

We found a modest townhouse in the heart of Beacon Hill, just above the Common. In summer, petals the color of Jay's old suit rain down on us from blossoming trees. I did well in bonds for a while, and then an opportunity at the _Globe_ cropped up through a co-worker. In spite of my attempts to persuade him otherwise, Jay went back to work of a nautical persuasion, but it never takes him far from shore. He turns a deft hand at decorative restoration, has a keen eye for design. I asked if, one day, he'd build _us_ a yacht instead of spending all his time on other people's vessels. He'd laughed and told me not to get ahead of myself, to keep scribbling columns till I got famous, and maybe _then_ . . .

The past is both behind us and ahead of us, patiently looming, and I am content.


	2. Naming Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a series of moments from the previous chapter that needed fleshing in more detail.

**Castle Rackrent  
West Egg, New York**

That first morning, I woke up with a sore right shoulder and Jay fast asleep against it. He was warm and still had the faintest whiff of antiseptic. I lingered over his hair, let my lips rest against his forehead. I'd known I wanted him, but I had not in truth known I wanted _this_.

I must have tightened my hold on him, because he stirred.

"I hope you slept all right, old sport," murmured Jay, abashedly, with a stifled yawn.

"Of course I did," I told him cheerfully. "You didn't even kick or hoard the sheets."

When I exhaled into the golden tousle of his hair, Jay didn't so much stiffen as grow tense and press closer, as if trying to hide himself in what slight shelter I offered. "Forgive me if I . . . " he began, and then shook his head. "It's been several years."

"It's been just as long for me," I said. "There's little you could say to cause offense."

He hid his face against my chest with a sigh. I held him there, my heart hammering.

"Did you always know this about yourself, or was it a shock when you found out?"

"My mother and father knew before I did," I said, "as parents so often do. There was something in the way I interacted with other boys, I'm sure. It's probably why they encouraged me to stay out of sports in school, although that backfired, as you can imagine. By college, the proclivity had only been furthered in the literature I read."

Jay peered at me curiously. "What sorts of scandalous things _were_ you reading?"

"Walt Whitman, for a start," I said, grinning. "Oscar Wilde. Shakespeare's _Coriolanus_."

Jay gradually abandoned his reserve. "Were you involved with anyone at Yale?"

"Involved, no," I replied, tracing his shoulder blade. "I wasn't brave enough by far. I had my fair share of fantasies—fixations, you might say. Take Tom, for example. I liked looking at him, but his personality left something to be desired even then."

At that, Jay actually did stiffen, and I instantly regretted having confessed to him.

"I like looking at _you_ more," I reassured him. "Almost as much as you like looking at me. I'd never have propositioned him, let alone slept with him."

Jay was hard against my belly, trying not to give in to the restlessness of his hips. I caught his lower lip between my teeth, worried at it. I wanted to do everything with him that it was possible to do with another man, some of which I'd never even tried.

"Nick, why did you do it?"

" _Hmmm_? Why'd I do what?"

"Stay up with me that terrible night," Jay said solemnly. "Save my life—"

I kissed him, afraid my too-earnest tongue might get carried away. Did he not understand that being with him was what made my restless hours worth living? Jay's stomach chose that moment to give an unceremonious growl.

"I'll get up," I said, planting a kiss against his chin. "Make you eggs and toast."

"Not now, old sport," he said, voice strained, holding me in place. "Maybe in a while."

Such a distinct thrill of pleasure, being asked to stay abed. I let my hand slip from his waist down to his thigh, creeping around to the front. He lifted his hips with a groan muffled against the pillow, letting my fingers find purchase in between us.

"I'll take care of everything," I promised, scarcely aware of what words passed my lips as I worked us both into a quiet frenzy. "Take care of _you_."

Whether it was what I'd said or the fervency of our movements, my fingers and my own sensitized flesh were suddenly slick with the evidence of how much he was enjoying the attention. I bit his collarbone and shuddered helplessly under him. We lay gasping against each other's mouths, a cooling and complicated mess, until an energetic string of Finnish and fractured English rattled the front of the house.

"That'll be breakfast," I told Jay, shifting him carefully to one side, and rolled out of bed. "Take all the time you need getting up. I'll go intercept the mad old bat."

"Does she have a name?" Jay asked, up on both elbows to watch as I rubbed my skin as clean as I could with last night's discarded underthings and hastily began to dress.

"Magda," I said, barefoot in wrinkled trousers, shirt half buttoned, and dashed out.

 

**Le Château Frontenac  
Québec City, Canada**

Our third-floor suite had two large beds, one of which we fastidiously ignored.

The _genever_ was simultaneously sweeter and sharper than New York gin as it hit the back of my tongue. I set my tumbler back down on the bedside table, my fingers drenched with condensation, and settled in closer against Jay's side. He shivered as I ran a chip of ice down the curve of his neck and let it drop harmlessly into the pillows. It was the first time I'd ever seen Jay something approaching intoxicated.

"Then we both miss Europe," I slurred, lazily picking up the suspended thread of our conversation. "Lots. We should go back if we can afford it. Do you think we can?"

"Possibly, old sport," he told me, one arm thrown possessively over my side. He delayed any rejoinder on my part with a leisurely, slack-jawed kiss. He showed no hesitation now, two months on; I sucked the gin-taste from his tongue with delight.

"Let's go to London first," I implored him, mouthing my way from the hollow of his throat to the still-livid scar on his chest. I lingered there, resting my cheek against the spot. "I miss it. The food isn't as bad as they say, and Regent's Park is magnificent."

"I never went there," Jay said, arching a bit as my hand, well ahead of my mouth, drifted lower. "But I went to Hyde Park and to Saint James's—Nick, what the _devil_ —"

I kissed his bellybutton, his hipbone, and then nuzzled the proof of his interest.

"You can take me to Oxford," I said, with an experimental lick. "Show me around."

Jay groaned and twisted under me, almost throwing me off-task. I held him still.

"Nick—Nick, _old sport_ —it's just that—that's not respectable, you see, not _done_."

I guided his faltering fingers into my hair and drew him back into my mouth. It was an unaccustomed effort, learning the salt-and-skin taste of him, but his movements were captivating, his cries even more so. I pulled off for a moment, catching my breath.

"It's done as long as I say it is," I announced drunkenly, "and also as long as it gets you off. What makes you think I give a damn about what wives and mistresses will or won't do? I'm neither one, and I want to suck you till you scream, so that's settled."

And Jay _did_ shout, loudly and brokenly enough to distract me from the urge to spit. Once he'd caught his breath, he coaxed me back up and kissed me as if he tasted nothing amiss, his hand on me as skilled and relentless as I could have wished.

"We'll pack in the morning, old sport," he said later, passing back the cigarette.

 

**The Old Parsonage  
Oxford, England**

"Oscar Wilde lodged here for a while," I told Jay, tossing one of our suitcases on the spare bed. "Just think of what he must have done here. What these walls have seen."

"They've seen a great deal more than Wilde and his entanglements," Jay said, sidling up behind me, "and they'll continue to witness wonders if I have any say in the matter." He slid one arm around my waist, using his free hand to thumb his way inside my trousers. "Nick," he prompted, inclining his head toward the unoccupied bed.

I find it impossible to accurately describe the sensation of being the sole focus of that fearsome, miraculous intensity. We were tired from transit, dusty and irritable just off the train, but it was then that he undressed me fully without aid or intervention for the very first time. His own clothing seemed an afterthought, hanging unceremoniously open, as he pushed me down against the cool duvet, sucked me in hard and deep.

When he finally paused for breath and I was near delirious, Jay asked, "Your boy in the war, what was he called? I don't recall whether you had said his name at the time."

"Arnaud," I told him, fingers unsteady in his hair, against his cheek. "Your officer?"

"John," he said, palming me deftly as he bent his head again. "Nothing remarkable."

"Oh, _you're_ remarkable," I gasped. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

Jay finished me quickly after that, and what I saw behind my ecstatically closed eyes rivaled his fabled fireworks twenty times over.

I urged him onto his back and gave him as good as I'd got, or at least I hoped I did. Even as James Gatz, Gatsby was still a fast learner and an overachiever next to those who had been in the game for far longer.

Jay studied me as I lay dozing beside him; his gaze had always had a tactile quality, even in those early days when we'd remained properly attired neighbors. "I don't know how to say this, Nick," he began, setting his right hand on my chest.

"Then think it over for a while and say it later," I told him sleepily. "Rest with me."

Resolutely, Jay shook his head, letting his hand drift down to my hip. "Waiting isn't a wise thing to do. Nearly all of my chiefest regrets are the product of hesitation."  That woke me up somewhat and forced me to focus. Jay's eyes were fixed on mine, hard and inscrutable, bright with the effort of holding back tears left too long unshed.  "Look here, old sport," he said abruptly, clapping my thigh. "I'm yours."

We slept little that night in spite of our exhaustion. Our sated wonder was the richer for it, and I have no doubt Oscar Wilde would have approved.

 

**La Mère Poulard  
Mont Saint-Michel, France**

We had a small balcony overlooking the ocean, and the view was staggering. We'd come back up to the room after an excellent lunch in the dining room and ordered tea service to see us through the restful hours until dinner.

The hotel's founder had apparently been a dab hand at baking; even the circling sea birds seemed to agree.

Jay brushed the butter-biscuit crumbs off my chin with his thumb. "Nick Carraway, you're a mess," he chided happily. "An actual mess, old sport. Take it from me."  I grinned at him over my tea, still hazed from the champagne we'd had at lunch.

"So what are you going to do about it?" I asked, setting the cup and saucer down.

"Why, make an even bigger mess of you, of course," he said, rising to go inside.

I followed at more of a wobble than a walk, so Jay had to slide an arm around my shoulders and guide me over to the bed. They were less prudish here, or perhaps less inclined to ask questions. We'd been given a suite with a single canopied king-size.

"I'm afraid I might not be much use to you," I said. "I've had quite a lot to drink."

"About that, old sport," Jay said, patiently stripping me out of my shirt. "What do you say we cut back a bit once this jaunt's over. Just like me and smokes, you see."

"Whatever you want, Jay," I told him, fumbling at the fastenings of his trousers.

"What I want is for you to _last_ ," he said, laying me flat. "To watch you grow old."

"What, you'll still want me then? When I'm not young and handsome anymore?"

I'd meant it in jest, but something in his demeanor suggested that he was anything _but_ joking. He got up and walked over to the balcony door, trousers flapping open, and at first I thought he was going to let me cool my heels and sleep it off.

Instead, he slid the door shut, but not the whole way, leaving enough of a crack to admit the salt-stung breeze. He proceeded to strip down swiftly, sternly, and it was all I could do not to let my head loll to one side and _stare_. Even scarred with old wounds and past cares, he was still the most gorgeous creature I'd ever seen. I tried to tell him as much, but it came out in a jumble that would've made Magda sound coherent.

"I know you said you'd take care of everything, but I'd much rather take care of you."

"You've done lots of that," I reassured him. "I'm better kept than Tom's mistresses."

Jay threw the last of his clothes down and climbed onto me with shocking strength, yanking my chin up so that I'd have no choice but to look at him. He wasn't angry enough to be furious, and I was too drunk to be afraid.

Beneath the champagne's influence, a persistent ache in my chest told me I'd said something careless.  "I'm here with you because you wanted to see Europe again," he said. "With me."

"Yes," I agreed, readily nodding. "We're having ourselves a grand old time."

"With the last of my fortune," he said, roughly letting go of my chin, and then regretfully converted the gesture into a stroking of my cheek. "I'm sorry, old sport, I'm sorry," he whispered. "I lost my temper. I got carried away."

All I could think was that it rhymed with Carraway, of how absolutely, horrifyingly funny that was.

My changing expression must have conveyed that to him in a series of mute, yet painstakingly precise hints, because before long we were clinging to each other and laughing like a pair of Yale undergraduates fresh out of exams.

"You're a dream to keep," Jay said at length, settling between my thighs. "No fuss."

"You give me everything," I told him, pinching his backside. "I've been spoiled rotten."

He kissed my neck, lingered a while before lifting his head to breathe hotly in my ear.

"I want you, old sport," he said in a low, harsh meaning-laden voice, "very badly."

The implication, however, was that my present performance left something to be desired. I nuzzled his throat and kissed him, reached between us to guide him down.  "Never mind me, Jay," I told him, punch-drunk on love as much as anything. "Do it."

"No, no," he said, stroking my hair back as he kissed my forehead. "Later. Tonight."

"I'm wild about you," I whispered against his cheek, loud enough for him to hear.

We lay like that for the longest time, listening to the roar of the surf over the softer, less obvious accompaniments of pulse and breath relaxed enough to tempt sleep.  "I'll order some matches," Jay murmured. "Imagine this room, this bed, with candles."

"Roses," I replied, close enough to drowsing that even the sea seemed distant.

"Roses," Jay agreed, his voice gone soft and fond. "For you, old sport. White ones."


	3. In the Meantime, In Between Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which family ties grow tangled and the narrative comes full circle.

Our return to the United States was not as straightforward as I've heretofore made it sound. Having decided Boston would be our destination, there was the complicated matter of lodgings after arrival. We had scraped the bottom of Jay's remaining funds to book first-class passage, which resulted in a blissful fortnight spent mostly shut up in our stateroom, in spite of various charming heiresses' efforts to draw us out.

Picking up where we'd left off on that champagne-soaked Normandy afternoon, I learned that I liked straddling Jay while he moved under me, spanned the breach, better to watch him fervently unravel. We were two days from port when I turned the tables, feverish with the heat of him, the weight of his legs draped over my shoulders. His post-coital kisses, once almost chaste in their devotion, had unraveled with him.

"It saddens me we won't have another night in your old place," Jay said facetiously, turning so that I could settle behind him with an arm thrown over his waist. "We could have added this to the long list of scandals that Magda has no doubt compiled."

"I don't know if she can even read," I said, dotting soundless kisses across his nape.

"The list's in her own language, you see," Jay said. "We have nothing to worry about."

"We have money to worry about," I replied. "Maybe this wasn't a good idea after all."

"Nonsense. We did the right thing and laid low a while. Now we're fat and happy."

I pinched his belly, which had filled out again, restored to its ever-so-slight softness.

"I sent a wire to my father three days ago," I said. "I told him things hadn't gone so well in New York, reminded him that he'd probably seen all of that fuss in the papers and said I needed to get away for a while. I found an old war buddy in England, as it happens," I continued, right in his ear, pulling him tight against me, "who's been as hard-up as I have. We traveled for a bit, paying our respects across France, but we miss home, and we've got it in our heads to share a place in Boston while we find our feet again. We're not sure we can afford it, but we'll make do somehow . . . "

"Your powers of manipulation," Jay said admiringly, twisting his head around so that our mouths touched, "are simply astonishing, old sport. I must admit I'm almost proud of you."

We arrived at the Omni Parker House (which is where I told my father we'd be staying until we found a place to live, although how we were going to pay for more than a few nights of _that_ , I had no idea) to find both a reservation and a telegram from my father waiting for us at the concierge.

"Renting is preferable," he wrote, "but buy if expedient. Come and see us soon. Let's meet this fellow." The message was cordial, if terse, and it was a welcome change from my family's reactions to both my abortive attempt to stay in France and my insistence upon moving East (which my father had, if you recall, agreed to fund for the first year; otherwise, how should I have kept up?)

"They want us to come visit," I told Jay over supper. "And I do mean both of us."

"Who does?" he asked, hesitating over another forkful of fish. "Friends of yours?"

"My family," I said. "More specifically, my father does. He's magnanimous like that."

Jay nodded slowly as he chewed. "Where are they, your family? Who's still living?"

"Both of my parents, plus a whole host of aunts and uncles. Mom has three living sisters and one deceased; Dad's siblings are all alive, two sisters and three brothers."

"And they're all in one city?"

"All in Saint Paul and environs."

"I hope you're an only child, old sport."

"Oh, I am," I said. "Just like you are."

"My mother died some time ago," he said pensively, even though I hadn't expected reciprocation. "My father lives not too far from Saint Paul. I bought him a house there."

"It was kind of him to send the telegram. I replied to it like you asked, but he didn't respond. I wondered whether I should've been worried."

"We understand that we're better off the less we see of each other."

"It's much the same with me and my family, although my father and I have a kind of understanding. We both keep to ourselves, but we can communicate when it matters."

"Then does this telegram mean we're supposed to go house-hunting and call him as soon as we've found something, or is there some hidden implication that I'm missing?"

"It means he'd prefer we came to visit first," I said. "We'd leave with money."

Jay nodded soberly, wrangling what was left of his cod into a neat pile of flakes.

"Then let's go to Saint Paul, maybe spend a day or two in Chicago on our way back."

Jay was unusually quiet that night, turned in early while I rang my father to make our travel arrangements. He was asleep by the time I got off the phone, so I turned out the light, undressed, and climbed into bed as unobtrusively as I could.

He didn't turn to face me, but he dragged my hand from his hip up to his heart and held it fast.

 

 

 

* * *

 

  

Travel by rail is tedious at best and doldrum-inducing at worst. We avoided the dining car when we could and stuck to our sleeper; between my brief twice-daily trips to procure food for us both, we passed the time talking and playing cards and, otherwise, being as quiet and careful as we could not to leave the linens in an irreparable state.

I knew full well that others before us had been reported for less, and lost their lives, too. While serving-staff in Canada and Europe could be counted upon for a certain measure of discretion, I gave our homegrown stock no such benefit of the doubt. It's just as well that we were in Boston for only three days. We'd used both beds in the suite, one for each night, had made it clear to the concierge that our room wanted no disturbance from housekeeping until our departure. Even then, I'd been wary.

"What about your family?" Jay asked as we rattled over the Minnesota border. "Surely they wouldn't report us. That's what blood is for, isn't it—keeping a lid on scandal."

"Little do they know, I'm bringing home a doozy," I said, flicking some ash out the window. I offered Jay the remaining third of my cigarette, but he declined. "I brought a friend home from Yale one Christmas, and he was just that—a friend. My mother had the housekeeper stick him in the guest-room farthest up the hall from mine."

Jay raised his eyebrows. "Your family has more than one guest-room, old sport?"

"It's a big house," I said. "We have two guest-rooms, my parents' room, and mine."

"Then I'll have to sneak around at night if I'd like to see you, is that it?"

"Don't be silly. I'll do the sneaking around. I know which floorboards creak."

We spent the first five days on our best behavior, enduring my mother's cookery and the endless parade of relations with stoic humor. My father took to Jay right from the off, which was unexpected; usually, I could have counted on him to give the interloper a thorough ribbing. Jay's habitual reserve, coupled with a direct and gracious demeanor when he did speak, threw into sudden, vivid relief for me what Dan Cody must have seen in him those many years ago. My aunts and uncles were charmed by his taciturn modesty, having latched onto the dashing young war hero.

"Stay till Christmas," my father said over brandy and cigars on the sixth evening. "It's only two weeks away. It'll make your mother's whole New Year just to have you." Before I could respond—and a good thing, too, since I was tipsy—Jay gracefully cut in.

"Mr. Carraway, I can't tell you how much I would've enjoyed that. My father's in a town about twenty miles from here, and he's got nobody to spend the holidays with. I promised him we'd come, but if you just can't part with Nick, I'm happy to go myself."

"Nonsense," said my father, gruffly. "You oughtn't travel alone," he added, reflexively patting his own chest (I'd explained the reason for Jay's slight infirmity as the lingering effects of a war-wound; nobody had dared to question). "We'll have you driven out a couple of days before the twenty-fourth, how's that? Plenty of time."

Jay was effusive in his thanks, but not to excess, and a brief cigar-induced coughing spell proved reason enough for him to retire for the night. My father and I sat puffing and swilling in silence until my father had sufficiently shaped his brooding into words.

"He's older than you are by a little bit," he said uncomfortably. "Three or four years?"

"Hardly even," I said. "He turned thirty-two a couple of months before I turned thirty."

My father nodded and poured himself some more brandy, but he didn't refill my glass.

"You'd better sober up, Nicky," my father said, "and take a good hard look at yourself." I stared at my shoes, marveling at his ability to make me feel approximately twelve years old. Even when Daisy called me that, it didn't carry the same condescension. "I don't blame anyone," he continued with a heavy sigh. "You were going to turn out the way you are no matter what. No, what I'm talking about is all of this restlessness of yours, this flitting about from here to there. I worry about your lack of commitment more than I worry about your— _questionable_ —proclivities, are we clear?"

"Yes, Dad," I said, downing the dregs of my glass. "We're clear. I understand."

My father nodded gravely. "Just to make sure that you do, I'm giving you ten thousand and writing you out of my will. If you can't find a place to live and get a foothold with that kind of money, then I don't know what hope there is for you."

I sat in stunned silence. He'd only given me four thousand to fund my New York venture. This was sobering, as it wasn't one man's exile fee. It was enough for two. "Dad, I don't—" I began, finding it difficult not to reveal that what I felt was more elation than devastation "—that is, I don't know what to say. That's very generous of you, and, yes, of course I understand. It wouldn't be proper for you to . . . to . . . "

"That Jay seems like a decent young man," my father said. "He grew up poor?"

"Very, very poor," I agreed. "So poor I really can't begin to imagine it, actually."

"Don't be selfish, son. If he ever wants to leave, let him. Don't rob him of a life."

That was the point by which I'd had enough, no matter how generous his send-off.

"A life's what we hope we've got, Dad. Good night." I got up and left the study.

If Jay had any objections to my invading the guest-room and climbing naked into bed beside him, he didn't give them. I'd become an expert at ridding him of his underwear even given the obstacle of bedclothes. I didn't care if it got back to my father by way of the housekeeper.

Perhaps confirmation would prompt _him_ to take a good hard look.

 

 

 

* * *

  

 

Whether it was the ensuing week of only one spare bed actually seeing any use (and use it thoroughly, we did) or the fact that my father genuinely felt some kind of distant, abstract pity for Mr. Gatz, Jay and I were quietly shipped off to Edina. The hastily written check in my pocket was light as a feather, and strangely comforting.  The drive, which should have lasted about forty minutes, took well over an hour due to unexpected snowfall.

Jay had called ahead to inform his father of our arrival.

"I'd of stayed inside if I'd known you were running late," said the old man with watery eyes and an impressive grey beard who greeted us from the front porch. He'd clearly been waiting a while; he stood shivering in his ulster. "Let me take some of those."

"We'll manage," Jay insisted, taking two of our bags. I followed him up the slippery front walk with the other two while snowflakes swirled, glittering cold around us.  Once we'd got inside and shed our wet coats, Henry Gatz offered me one shaky hand.

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr.—"

"Carraway," I said, shaking it. "I'm Nick Carraway."

"Jimmy tells me you met in the war," Mr. Gatz continued.

"Yes," I replied, catching Jay's wary expression. "We did."

In that modest, yet comfortable house, there was only one spare bedroom. Mr. Gatz showed us to the door and then said he'd be in the kitchen when we were ready to eat. Until then, I'd failed to register the obvious aroma of roast chicken and potatoes.

"Well, this one's easy, old sport," Jay said, lightly kicking the spare mattress and set of linens his father had dug up somewhere and set on the floor beside the bed.

"I'll almost feel bad about not using it," I said. "He went to so much trouble."

"We can," Jay said, flipping the light-switch on our way out. "If it'll set you at ease."  I kissed him in the darkened hall, unhurried, while we listened to his father rattle around mumbling to himself with plates, silverware, and beer bottles in the kitchen.

Playing the veteran observer for the next handful of days while father and son caught up over cups of coffee and ragged family memorabilia was no hardship. Mr. Gatz had a little black house-cat to keep him company, and she had instantly taken a liking to me for no reason other than I'd scratched behind her ears when we first walked in.

"You be good now, Sassy," Mr. Gatz told her. She stretched in my lap and yawned.

"Where'd she get that name?" I asked, finding her rather too genteel for the moniker.

"She's called Sassafras," Jay volunteered unexpectedly. "After one of our barn-cats."

"Ah," I said, and scratched under her chin. She purred fit to rival the Kissel's engine.

Whether it had been present in him from the start of our visit, I couldn't say, but by the time we'd been under Mr. Gatz's roof for a full week, I perceived that a restless melancholy colored Jay's every gesture. He only seemed like himself when we were alone after hours, wrapped up together in the guest-bed against the ferocious cold.

"Out with it," I said to him, finally. "If you're unhappy here, then we ought to leave."

"There's nothing I'd like more, old sport," Jay sighed, "but I feel obliged, you see. He was the only other person who gave a damn when I was shot, aside from you."

"It's his job to give a damn," I said, keeping half an eye on Sassy, who'd followed us into the room several hours earlier and was now crouched next to the door, occasionally pawing at it with a pitiful yowl. "Estranged or not, he's your father."

"Was it your job to give a damn, too? Did you feel you had a say in the matter?"

Partly stung by the question and partly fed up with the cat, I picked my way out of bed, retrieved my underwear from the floor, and put them on before opening the door just a sliver. Sassy bolted without so much as rubbing up against my legs in thanks.

I closed the door and said, "Three months later, that's all you can think to ask?"

Jay's features crumpled as he sat up, badly skewing the covers, and reached for me. "I didn't mean it like that," he insisted. "You have to understand, it's just that sometimes I have so much _doubt_ —" he paused, and for a moment I could hear his voice on the other end of the line again and knew with fateful certainty that this is what I would have seen "—but I know I shouldn't. Not with you. Nick, I—"

"You couldn't say it then," I said, picking my way over the clothing-strewn spare mattress on the floor, "but I you almost did, I almost _heard_ it. Is it that difficult?"

"I do need you," he said, patting the pillow. "Now, come keep me warm, old sport."

I went to him willingly, wondering why I'd even bothered getting partially dressed. "I'll talk to your father tomorrow," I murmured later, what with both of us sated and more than half asleep. "People open up for me, and sometimes they even listen." 

Drowsily, Jay nodded, burrowing even closer against my shoulder in the process.

 

 

 

* * *

  

 

I rose an hour earlier than usual the next morning, faced instantly with the challenge of disentangling myself from Jay without waking him. He slept deeply now (and, I hoped, dreamlessly), although he was easy to rouse provided there was light in the room. As I had expected, Mr. Gatz was already seated in the kitchen with a plate of toast, the morning paper, and Sassafras perched in his lap.

"Not so easy to wake up these days, that son of mine. Didn't used to be."

"He's got a lot on his mind lately," I said, helping myself to some coffee.

"Jimmy always did," said Mr. Gatz, and the pride in his voice was unmistakable. "Even as a kid, he was always thinking of ways he might better himself. Let me show you."  He disappeared for a moment and returned carrying what looked like a ragged paperback. He put the book in my hands and resumed his seat, apparently pleased.

" _Hopalong Cassidy_?" I asked. "What specific part of it am I looking for?"

"Inside the back cover," he said. "Go on, take a look. It just shows you."

Jay's childhood _Schedule_ , dated 12th September 1906, was indeed thorough to a fault. He'd drifted a long way from rising at six o'clock in the morning, although he'd certainly succeeded where gaining poise and elocution was concerned. I had to smile at his resolve to stop smoking—ironic, especially now—and grant that he had made good on his promise to be better to his parents (or at least what was left of them).

"Jimmy was always making resolves like this," said Mr. Gatz. "For improving his mind, for getting ahead. He was a great one for that. Sure enough, he's gone and done it."

"Yes, he has," I agreed. "His latest venture's in Boston, so that's where we're headed."

"Great town, Boston, they say," Mr. Gatz mused. "Paul Revere's midnight ride, Tea Party in the harbor. I ain't never been. Are you his business partner now, Mr.—"

"Carraway," I reminded him, still too sleepy to be irritated. "Yes, I suppose I am."

"You've seen that grand house of his in New York, haven't you?" asked Mr. Gatz, taking out his wallet. He removed a slightly worn photograph and handed it to me, and my chest tightened at the sight. That fantastical, opulent monument to success: all gone now, all Wolfsheim's.

I nodded and handed the photograph back to him. "That's one of the decisions we made after he recovered, you see," I said, hoping to God I'd learned a thing or two from him about lying. "The house would've been too big to maintain all the way from Boston, too much fuss to look after. We're turning he profits over on a nice place in Beacon Hill and putting the rest toward business costs."

"You young 'uns sure got the right idea," said Mr. Gatz, tapping his forehead. "Join up and double your fortunes, downsize until you find the right gals to settle with."

"That's why we've been so grateful for your hospitality, Mr. Gatz," I continued, and a creak from the hallway, too soft for the old man's ears to catch, alerted me to the likelihood of Jay's lurking presence. "As much as we'd like to stay longer, we'd best leave for Boston soon. This has been a wonderful respite before we get back to work."

"Good morning," Jay said, choosing that moment to make a spectacular show of yawning and stretching as he came into the kitchen. "I see you two have got a fine head-start on setting the world to rights." He paused to scratch Sassy behind the ears.

"I won't keep you longer if you've got to go," said Mr. Gatz, watery-eyed with excitement. "You've got plans. Send me a picture of the new place."

"Oh, I will, Dad," Jay said, and gave his father that dazzling smile. "I promise I will."

Our return journey to the East Coast passed in much the same fashion as our outward journey to the Middle West had done, with the notable exception that I made an effort to drink less, and Jay didn't smoke at all. As a result, the ensuing card-games were far less interesting.

And so, lacking much else to do, the blinds of our sleeper car stayed solidly drawn.

When I say that we found a modestly appointed townhouse in the outskirts of Beacon Hill, I mean that we spent at least two and a half weeks back at the Omni Parker House before, between our individual widespread scouting efforts, we found a place that had been on the market for some months owing to the fact that it was in sore need of wall and flooring repairs.

Jay took one look at the small, shattered greenhouse in the back garden, turned to me, and said, "Look, old sport. Your writing studio."

After the viewing, back in our suite, I confessed to Jay that even a price tag of four thousand—a bargain, given the view and the neighborhood—gave me pause, not least because I didn't know the first thing about making improvements, and seriously doubted whether we could afford to bring in an appropriately skilled renovation team.

"That's where I come in," Jay said. "I've done it before, and I can do it again."

Suddenly, I'd never been more grateful for those rough years he'd spent taking work as and where he found it, from clam-digging to construction. "You can't do it overnight, though," I insisted. "I don't think your doctors in New York would advise it, and, furthermore, I won't _let_ you. Is it habitable as it is—I mean, what if you were to pick at it slowly and show me a thing or two along the way so I can help?"

Jay spent a moment or two turning this over in his mind before responding.  "Some of the ceiling plaster is cracked, but I didn't see any signs of damp or water damage higher up than the ground-floor walls," he said at length. "It's livable."

"How long do you think it would take us to get it up to code?" I asked.

"As we are?" he replied with a grimace. "Six months, more likely a year."

"Just say the word," I told him. "If you're up for that, I'll make an offer."  Jay rolled me over onto the papers on which I'd been scribbling estimates, which was more than enough of an answer. I called the real estate agent first thing in the morning.

Of course, that brings us back to the present. Three years on, our house is presentable—if not elegant, by most people's standards—and the greenhouse is sufficiently repaired (that I should be sat here shivering in it).

I occupy a mid-level editorial post at the _Globe_ , my dues in the bonds business having been paid, and pen a weekly column of some seven or eight months now that has garnered accolades on grounds of containing cutting, yet clever and ultimately uplifting social satire.

Normally, in these colder months, I'd have found myself writing indoors, watching Jay strip rotted wall-paper whilst in various states of undress. No job worth seeing through to loving completion is ever truly finished; although the matter of the walls is well behind us, Jay has moved on to projects ever more refined in focus, right down to rearranging the mosaic tiles in the short hallway leading to the cellar stairs.

And if the pattern he's chosen resembles one which we both recall from a half-remembered dream—as viewed through sun-shot ripples of clear and finite blue—it doesn't bear mentioning again, and by this time tomorrow I'll be forgiven.


	4. The Busy and the Tired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not how many ghosts you have, but how you manage them.

One fine March morning about a month after [the speakeasy raid at 153 Causeway Street](http://archiveofourown.org/works/728117/chapters/1576526) (an ominous presence in my memory, as Jay and I had not only been present for it, but had escaped the premises too narrowly for comfort), I received a letter from the one person who I had assumed least likely ever to seek contact with me again.

"Stay home," Jay murmured drowsily, draping one leg over my hip. "Can't the office make do without you today? You said last night that those columns write themselves."

"I told Taylor I'd be in an hour late," I replied, still trying to catch my breath precisely where I'd lost track of it in the damp, familiar curve of Jay's neck. "At this rate, I'll be an hour and a half. You're bad news for my career, Gatsby. You always have been."

"Then call in sick, old sport. I'll personally see to it that you get plenty of bed rest."

"I love you," I told him, rising, and then bent back down for a swift kiss, "but I don't believe for even a single second that you'd let us pass the day in a restful manner." He studied me with an expression of the same distant, dreaming disbelief he'd shown the first time I said it, never mind that we'd _both_ been saying it now for the better part of what would amount to exactly a decade come September. I smiled at him.

"And to think I'd been chasing the wrong cousin for five long years," Jay said softly.

"You stopped in time," I teased him, on my way out the door. "Jay, I've got to go."

The postman stopped me on the front stairs, his brief, critical glare making me wonder if, in my haste to dress, I'd added an especially offensive ensemble to the already standing affront of lacking an attractive wife with whom he might flirt.

The fault was with him, I reasoned, if he couldn't appreciate the sight of Jay in a dressing gown.

"Here's a letter for you, Mr. Carraway," he said gruffly, and then stalked off.

"Good morning to you, too, Frank," I said, about to step onto the sidewalk, but my eyes fell on the name above the return address and my heart stopped. I stood there blinking for several minutes, but the letters didn't alter or rearrange themselves in the slightest. Behind me, the front door swung open, and I felt suddenly, violently ill. Jay slid an arm around my waist, and we sank down together on the bottom stair.

"Nick, what is it?" he asked, setting a hand on the letter, which I had turned over.

"The wrong cousin," I said, surrendering the envelope. "Damned beautiful _fool_."

"What we're going to do," Jay said, guiding me carefully to my feet, "is go back inside. You're going to sit down and have a drink of something that's not bourbon while I ring Taylor and explain that dinner last night just didn't agree with you. Are we clear?"

"Are we going to open this while we're at it? I'd just as soon start up the fireplace."

"She's your family," said Jay, resigned, holding open the door. "It'd be rude not to."

I waited until Jay got back from the kitchen with a tea tray to open the ominous missive. Jay sat down beside me on the sofa while our Mélange Hédiard steeped, draping one arm behind me and across the back cushion with a casual, yet fiercely possessive air.

I unfolded the letter with trembling fingers; we both started to read.

 

_Dearest Nick,_

_How appalling my manners are—nine years! It was such dreadful business, wasn't it, a very bad time, there's no denying that, and we must hope it's all turned out for the best. Still, I must be brave and write to you: Tom and I spent Christmas in Chicago, and who did we see but dear old Aunt Meredith? She asked me how you were getting on in Beantown. I told her I had no idea that's where you were; I thought you'd stayed in New York. She says you've been living with some nice young man you met in the War, which is an awful shame, Nicky, if you think about it. Jordan's been married to some Asheville caddie for almost six years now—can you imagine? Pammy turns thirteen in April. It's for her sake I got your address from Aunt Meredith. Pammy's grown ever so fond of history, and Auntie reckons there's no place so full of history as Boston (or Philadelphia, or Washington . . . ) Well, look, we'd like to come visit you—that is, I mean Pammy and me. I'm afraid Tom wants nothing to do with you any more; I've tried to make him understand, but those rumors about you that went around Yale are gospel now as far as he's concerned (we've got to beat you down right along with the other races . . . ) Nicky, I don't care if the rumors are true—that's not the part that scares me—but I'm afraid of what else I've heard, so very afraid, and Pammy's begging and begging to see Boston now and I just don't know what to do. I ought to have called you, but Aunt Meredith didn't give me your telephone number, and I didn't want to ask—Nicky, I'll give you mine—please call. I'm so sorry for so very many things, and if what Meredith said about him is true I just can't bear to think—!_

_Your DAISY_

 

Her phone number was scrawled across the bottom, a quavering postscript. "Matches," I muttered, struggling to my feet, almost knocking the tea tray off the coffee table. "This is a goddamned disaster, Jay. No way in hell am I letting her try . . . "

Jay stood behind me at the sink and watched three quarters of the letter burn before turning on the faucet and shaking the charred remnant—her phone number—dry. "She owes you an apology," he said. "She's making it the only way she knows how."

"She owes _you_ a fucking apology," I snarled, shocked into silence by my own venom.

Jay rested his cheek against the back of my head, hands on my shoulders, breathing hard. I held the wet fragment in my open, ash-smudged palms, my vision blurring. "Never forget," he whispered, "that it's you I chose in the end, _you_ I'm holding."

"That's the part that scares _me_ most," I said, the words half sobbed, half laughed.

I stood there and choked the rest of it out in silence while Jay made his way purposefully over to the telephone, dialed the _Globe_ , and told Taylor not to expect me until Wednesday. I dropped Daisy's number and dashed over, took hold of his arm, asked him what the _hell_ he thought he was doing, but he'd hung up by then. He was strong, stronger than I was: he half dragged, half carried me back upstairs to bed.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

"You got your way," I mumbled late the next morning around a mouthful of toast. "You always do. Here I am. Traumatized, debauched, and out two days' wages."

"More debauched than traumatized," Jay said, adjusting the pillows behind us. "I've got a consultation on Thursday and a repair job on Saturday. Don't worry, old sport."

"You've got till eight tomorrow morning. What _else_ are you going to do with me?"

"Talk some sense into you now that you're sufficiently bedded and fed," he said. "You've overworked yourself again. You wouldn't have reacted to Daisy's letter like that if you hadn't spent all last weekend chained to the typewriter and drinking—"

"The columns write themselves, yes," I pointed out, "but the novel sure doesn't."

"It won't if you force it," said Jay, and put what was left of the toast in my hand.

"What's this about talking sense into me?" I asked, forcing myself to eat the rest.

"I do think," replied Jay, calmly, "that you should give Daisy a call this evening."

"Are you crazy?" I asked, tossing our empty plate on the floor. It didn't shatter, as it had landed on the rug, but the impact made Jay flinch. "We've had almost ten years free of them all, Jay, so why, _why_ would you even think that's a _remotely_ sound idea?"

Jay stared at his hands against the duvet, and then fetched my tea off the nightstand.

"Closure," he said, pressing the mug between my palms. "It did _me_ a world of good."

Disgusted, I raised the mug to my lips and cursed into what was left of my breakfast.

"If I let her speak her piece, will you let it go? I hate them, maybe her most of all."

"This isn't about me letting go. I did that a long time ago, Nick. This is about you."

I shook my head and handed the empty mug back to him. "Daisy very nearly got you killed— _twice_ , might I add—and didn't even care to come see you in the hospital, much less send a card. They're careless people, Jay. Careless, hateful, _dangerous_ people."

"Are we any less so," he asked quietly, "you and I? After our part, what _we've_ done?"

"Jordan's a survivor," I said, burrowing under the covers. "I mean, look at her now."

"And so are we," Jay insisted, following suit. He tugged the covers up over our heads and rolled me onto my back. "Daisy's not going to steal me away, if that's what you're afraid of. She's thinking of her daughter, which is more than she ever did before."

I recalled the solemn, bewildered blonde toddler we'd each once greeted in turn. She'd had quick, restless eyes like her father and unusual articulacy for a child of three.  "Thirteen," I said, utterly disbelieving. "With an avid interest in history, no less. There go her mother's hopes for her, dashed to pieces." I swallowed my laughter, abruptly serious. "Where'd the time go, anyway? What happened to the future we imagined?"

Jay gave an indignant huff and kissed me soundly, at least in part to shut me up.

"I imagined a farce," he sighed finally, "and you didn't imagine anything at all."

"Because I wasn't brave enough," I said. "I've told you before. I'm a coward."

"Then you've no choice but to face her," Jay implored, "and prove yourself wrong."

"You have so much faith in me," I marveled, shifting slowly under him. "Why?"

Even as Jay's eyes slid shut, his lips parted. "You kept—Nick, I _stayed_ for you."

That was how, several hours later, I ended up disheveled in Jay's dressing gown on the sofa with the telephone cradle in my lap and the receiver clutched to my ear in sheer terror. Jay sat down beside me, indulging in a rare cigarette, holding it out so that I could take a slow drag every now and again in order to steady my nerves.

"Things went from bad to worse," I sighed, and, in a puff of smoke, finally dialed.

Jay's arm slipped from the back of the sofa, settled across my shoulders while it rang.

The butler, whose curt tone I knew instantly, answered. "Buchanan residence—"

"No, Henri, let _me_ ," said a young, unfamiliar voice, female but unquestionably inflected with a touch of Tom's haughty forthrightness. "Mother said I should practice." The girl cleared her throat. "Hello, this is the Buchanan residence. Pamela speaking."

"This—" I hesitated, fixing Jay with a panicked expression "—this is Nick Carraway. Pammy, is that you? Why, hello there. I haven't seen you since you were _three_."

"It's Pam now," she said crossly, "but Mother will never learn. Are you Uncle Nicky?"

"Well, yes, I'm—" Jay held the cigarette to my lips and made an encouraging gesture "—yes, I suppose I am. You can call me whatever you like. Is your mother at home?"

"She says I'm to speak to you for her," said Pam. "It will be useful experience if I arrange the visit. I shall call you Uncle Nick, because Nicky's no better than Pammy, is it? Oh, _Mother_ , quit making faces. You know it's true. Mother _is_ here, and I think this is not just for practice, but because she's afraid of you. You must be awfully smart, Uncle Nick, to make Mother so afraid," the girl continued, and I felt a thrill of hope at the innocent, winking sarcasm in her voice. "Mother's _very_ afraid of smart people."

At this juncture, I heard a struggle in which the phone got wrested away from Pam.

"As you might have guessed," said Daisy, breathlessly, "I can't take her anywhere."

"Oh, I don't know about that," I said coolly. "I think Boston will like her just fine."

"Listen, Nicky," she said. "You've changed. You've changed, and I don't like it one bit."

"It sounds to me like you haven't changed at all. Charming Daisy Fay. We'll be glad to have the two of you come visit, of course. We've got a nice brownstone."  Jay held my hand, tolerating how I squeezed his fingers tighter with every word.

"We'll be delighted to come," she snapped. "They say you live with some man."

"That's right," I said, keeping my voice even. "You'll get on like old friends."

"Delightful," said Daisy, resigned. "When shall we plan to visit you, Nicky?"

I heard Pam in the background, caught the words _Mother, don't call him_ —

"My schedule at the paper is negotiable," I said, because, inasmuch as I complained to Jay about his occasional machinations to keep me home for a day or two, it was true.

"What about next month?" Daisy asked, feigning nonchalance. "We'll come up on the first and stay for a week. I despise traveling by train, but there's nothing for it."

"Where are you?" I asked, suddenly aware I'd blanked her letter's return address.

"Alexandria. Tom likes being close to Washington. He's grown very political."

Jay must have overheard what she'd said, because his expression turned sour.

"Washington must like having him," I said, stroking the back of Jay's hand.

"You must think you're very funny. Does that man you live with think so?"

"What, you mean Jay?" I asked. "He thinks I'm a riot. See you on the first."

I hung up on her, trembling hard enough to rattle the receiver in its cradle.

"I don't care whether it's wise or not," I said, "but I _really_ need a drink."

Jay kissed me and got up, crossing the room to where we kept several decanters.

"I won't argue with that," he said, returning with two glasses. "Not in the least."

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

"The house isn't ready," I lamented, surveying our handiwork. "It'll never be ready."

"Then we'll leave it as it is," Jay said, steering me over to the sofa. I grudgingly sat down, careful not to wrinkle my jacket, and regarded Jay suspiciously when he knelt down in front of me on the floor, heedless of his pristine trousers. "Or we might even live in it a little," he suggested, reaching for my belt, "to compensate for the tidying."

I caught his fingers halfway through unfastening the buckle and demanded, breathing too shallowly, "What are you _doing_? They'll be here in forty-five minutes."

"It never takes you _that_ long when we do this, old sport," Jay pointed out, and proceeded to unbutton my flies even though I still had a decent grip on his wrists. "I couldn't possibly stop now, you see, not with you in such a state," he murmured, and I let go of his wrists as he drew me out for inspection—undone, _undone_.

"Be . . . oh, _God_ , Jay, be quick about it," I moaned, because his sure, inevitable mouth was already in the one place I most urgently longed for it to be in that moment.  Ten minutes later, by which time I was delirious but no closer to finishing, the doorbell rang. Jay stopped what he was doing, swore, and buttoned me up. It wasn't much better for him, having to set his own trousers back to rights even faster.

"I'll make it up to you later," he said, tugging me to my feet. "Tonight. I promise."

"Let's hope the walls aren't too thin," I muttered; the doorbell rang a second time.

"I don't care if they are," Jay replied, but he was staring pensively at the doorknob.

"Forget the house," I said, taking the few steps required to turn it. " _I'm_ not ready—"

Pam stood motionless on the front stoop, ahead of her mother, blotting Daisy out.  "Uncle Nick?" she ventured. She was almost as tall as Daisy, no mean feat for her age, and in response to my mute, astonished nod, she dropped her clutch on the welcome mat and threw her arms around me. I swayed backward into the house, managing to bear that slender, lively burden across the threshold without stumbling into Jay.

"That's no way to greet a stranger, precious," Daisy said, pulling the door shut as she stepped inside. She narrowed her dark eyes, tapping Pam on the shoulder. The girl hadn't let go of me, and she seemed to have no intention of doing so. "Do you remember him so well? You were only a baby when he saw you. Well, a toddler."

"I remember his face a little," Pam said against my shoulder. "It's such a kind face."

I set one supporting hand between Pam's shoulder blades, nodding to Daisy.  With impeccable timing, Jay stepped up beside me and bent to study Pam's face with his warmest smile. I wondered if she'd see in that smile what I'd first seen in it.

"My name is Pamela Buchanan," said the girl, letting go of me in favor of shyly offering Jay her hand, "and you must be Uncle Nick's mysterious gentleman friend."

"My name is James Gatz," he told Pam, giving her gloved knuckle the briefest of polite pecks, "and you can call me Jay. All of my close friends do. Your mother always did."

"Mother didn't tell me she knew you both," said Pam, tilting her blonde, bobbed head.

Jay let go of Pam's hand and turned to Daisy—as if she were a mere incidental, an afterthought. I felt breath returning to my lungs in great, relieved gasps, and I didn't realize I'd grown dizzy or even lost my feet until Jay had me by one arm and Pam had me by the other.

They planted me firmly in the nearest armchair. Daisy just stared.

"Mother, go get him some water!" Pam pleaded, already on her knees beside me. "I can see the kitchen right through there. Look what a shock you've given your poor, dear cousin. Is this how you treat everybody you haven't seen in years and years?"

"Mrs. Buchanan, please have a seat," Jay said, indicating the sofa. "I'll see to it."

While Jay clattered around the kitchen (from the sound of things, he was filling a pitcher and fetching down enough glasses for all of us), Daisy sat watching me with a mix of unabashed resentment and intense concern. She watched Pam fuss over me with curious detachment, too flummoxed to scold the girl for dabbing at my cheeks with her wadded-up gloves and checking my forehead for an elevated temperature.

"You haven't been following the doctor's orders, have you, Nicky?" she finally asked.

"I'm not seeing any doctor, Daisy," I told her. "There's nothing wrong with me at all."

"He hasn't got a fever, Mother," said Pam, getting to her feet. "He's just flustered."

"No," said Daisy, "but it doesn't take an expert to see you're still drinking too much."

Pam went over and sat on the sofa, scooting as far from her mother as she could.

"It's a dangerous proposition," said Daisy, glancing from Jay in the kitchen to me and then back again, "taking up with a man when you don't know what he's really worth."

"I know exactly what we're worth," I told her. "I write for a living, and he fixes boats."

"A writer!" Pam exclaimed. "That's so _exciting_. And Jay—does he really fix boats?"

"Only the finest in the Harbor," Jay said, bearing in a tray laden with a pitcher of water and the half-carafe of lemonade left over from the day before. "I'll take you out to see the one I'm working on in a few days, if you like. The owner would love to have you."

"Nicky used to go with Aunt Jordan," Daisy said as Jay filled glasses. "Remember?"

"No," said Pam. "I just remember you all sitting together around that great big table."

"She was useful," I told Daisy. "We all found each other useful back then, didn't we?"

"Daddy says Aunt Jordan's a freeloader," Pam said sweetly. "She had it coming."

I'm not sure how Jay kept a straight face as he parceled out glasses: first water for me, lemonade for Pam, water for Daisy, and then some more water for himself.  Helplessly, I started to laugh, and Pam, who'd been smirking as it was, joined in.

"I don't know what I'll do," Daisy said. "Now I can't be seen in public with any of you."

"Jay's very polite, Mother," said Pam. "The two of you can walk a few steps behind."

"I'm afraid not," Jay said, claiming the chair next to mine. "Mr. Carraway is taken."

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

"It's so beautiful here," Pam murmured, strolling amongst the graves. "Look at their sad, ancient faces with sad, round eyes. What did you say they're called, Uncle Nick?"

" _Memento mori_ ," I said, hands in pockets, studying the nearest headstone.

"Dazzle us, Nicky," said Daisy, "and translate. You went to Yale, after all."

Pam looked up, smiling conspiratorially. "Daddy went to Yale, too. Did you know?"

"I knew _him_ ," I said. "We were there at the same time, I mean. Daisy met your father because of me, I'm rather ashamed to say. At a polo reception in New Haven."

"I hadn't known _that_ ," Jay said, still regarding the stone. "But I might've guessed."

"How sordid we are," Daisy said, wrapping her fur coat tighter against the chill. "Sordid and tangled and incestuous. There's so much you don't know, precious."

Pam shied from her mother's fawning hands. "I don't want to know everything. Not everything about _you_ , anyway. I would rather know about these dead people and who carved the sad faces. _Memento mori_ , Uncle Nick. What does that mean?"

"It's basic Latin," I said. "I'm not brilliant. It means _remember that you will die_."

"You're brilliant compared to Daddy," said Pam, grudgingly, and tucked her hair behind her ears. "He can't even translate basic French." She stepped closer to me and Jay and whispered, "I don't know how he even got into Yale. He's not very bright."

"If you lack smarts, money can get you in," Jay said. "It can get you lots of things."

"Daddy does have money," she said pensively, staring at her expensive shoes against the brick walkway. "Mother said you were poor, and that you used to live in a charming little shack across the bay from our old house. Even if it was little, I don't think you could have done that if you were poor. You're not poor _now_. You live up on the same hill where all of the rich people in Boston live, in the same kind of house."

"I was lucky enough to go to Yale because _my_ father has money," I admitted, "but you might say I was also intelligent, and that helped. I _thought_ I was intelligent, but I spent some time making stupid decisions and letting my father pay for all of them."

"I don't want to do that," said Pam, and then looked at Jay. "Did you go to college?"

"I started to," he said. "At Oxford, right after the war. But I didn't get to finish."

Pam's eyes went as round as the ones carved into the headstones. "Oxford in _England_?" she asked, disbelieving. "Did you go to London? Did you see Big Ben?"

"I did," Jay said, and shot me a sidelong smile. "And your uncle and I went back in the winter of twenty-two. We went to Canada first, and then on to England and France."

"What a splendid honeymoon," said Daisy, wryly. "I got stuck with Kapiolani."

"I think Europe sounds _much_ more romantic than Hawaii," said Pam, and then paused for a moment before the next headstone, as if she'd only just realized she'd been complicit in a joke she could only partly understand. "But I know it wasn't one," she added, turning to Jay and me with apologetic haste. "A honeymoon, I mean."

"I don't know," said Jay, thoughtfully. "You could argue that honeymoons aren't just for people who can get married. People who enjoy each other's company go traveling together all the time, and it is, after a wondrous and particular fashion, romantic."

By the end of that statement, Pam was smiling at him, more than a bit dazzled.

"We only have two days left," she murmured. "I wish we'd done everything."

Daisy made a pained sound and covered her mouth; I steered her for the gate.

"We'll take the train from North Station out to Salem tomorrow, how's that?"

"Hawthorne's house is there!" said Pam, hopefully. "I read _The Scarlet Letter_."

"And the day before you leave, I'll take you to see the yacht," Jay promised.

When we got back to the house, Daisy went straight upstairs and retired early. Pam had been less than thrilled about sharing the guest bedroom with her mother, I could tell, but she'd borne sharing the plush queen-size with considerable grace. While Pam sat reading Eliot's latest collected volume, which I'd bought for her at the Grolier in Cambridge, I followed Jay into the kitchen and softly closed the door behind us.

"Do you know what she told me on the way back home, old sport?"

"More than you bargained for, I imagine; you've been very patient."

"She's heard about the women's colleges up here. She wants to go."

"Daisy will have a fit," I said, and then: "What about Wellesley?"

"Exactly," Jay agreed. "We'd never see her if she went to Smith."

We spent the next thirty seconds or so staring at each other, at first in dismay and then, gradually, from within the throes of startled, silent laughter. What had been intended as a visit of reconciliation had somehow led to us planning a future for the daughter of a woman we'd come to mutually despise. I leaned into Jay's embrace, crushing my mouth against his shoulder until the fit of hilarity subsided.

And, once it did, Jay tilted my chin up and pressed his lips to mine.

"Oh," said a voice from the doorway, wondering, yet unsurprised. "I see."

We drew apart quickly, but didn't let go of each other. It seemed absurd.

"You're rather odd," Pam said, "but I don't mind. Daddy does, but he thinks anybody who's different from him hardly counts as a person. I suppose you share that other room all the time, don't you, and not just when somebody comes to visit. I'm sorry," she faltered. "I won't tell anyone. I _promise_ I won't tell. I'm going to bed now."

Unthinking, I let go of Jay and went over to fold the terrified girl in my arms.  "It's all right," I said, and felt her tears dampen my shirt. "You stay up and read for as long as you want. Sleep on the sofa for all we care. This place is safe."

"I know," Pam hiccuped, clutching desperately at my arms. "I _know_."

Before retiring, we made her a cup of tea and saw to it she had some blankets.

"It's not right, what she has to put up with," I hissed, letting Jay strip me of my shirt. "She's young, but she's smarter than anybody I've met in a long time, and I can't figure out how two people like Tom and Daisy managed to produce—well, _her_."

"We wait and we watch," said Jay, consolingly, already out of everything except his underwear, "and you make sure she knows she has two sets of ears and a roof over her head should she need it, although in my estimation we're not parenting material."

I sat down on the edge of the mattress, ran my fingers through my hair.

"I didn't ask for this, Jay. I wanted to be rid of them, not to _care_."

"You need to stop worrying so much," Jay said, and tugged on my wrist until I crawled up to join him against the pillows. He was naked by now, and my desire to match him state for state resulted in an awkward scramble. He pulled me in close once I'd succeeded, arranged us so that we lay side by side, facing each other.

"That's all I've ever done," I said. "About everything. I don't really know how."

"Then at least stop talking for right now," Jay said. "That would be a good start."

I kissed him until the sense of sleepiness I'd been fighting off transformed into something else entirely. My body remembered the interruption of some five days ago, of the kitchen some fifteen minutes before, and decided that it would not tolerate another. When a floorboard creaked just outside our door in the hall, I froze and swore, felt nothing but the chaotic, wildly incessant clamor of our hearts.

Someone was hovering in the hallway, or had been there mere moments ago.

"Do you remember that first afternoon, after I got home from the hospital?" Jay asked, trailing one finger from my shoulder down the back of my arm. He was moving again, moving me right along with him, and I couldn't have resisted even if I'd tried.

"If I ever forget, it'll mean that my mind's gone and—oh, _Christ_ —it's no use."

"You felt so good, Nick," he murmured, "feel so good right _now_ , you drive me—"

I couldn't respond, except with a groan: I'd already tensed, gone still against him, coming hard and too soon. If Daisy really was listening at the door, I didn't spare her.  Jay didn't spare her, either: I held him fast, through who he'd both been and become, and my name gasped raggedly over and over was the only enchantment I'd ever need.

"King's Chapel today, Old Burying point tomorrow," I said after a while, sleepily, having been the one (as always) to clean us up and kill the lights. "The girl does love ghosts."

"She's learned to live with them early," Jay said. "I believe that'll serve her well."

If Pam's arrival meant our world was changing, perhaps we'd live to change with it.


	5. In Love and War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For once, Nick is finding the future a worthwhile pursuit.

**Off to Salem  
6 April 1932**

"Do you see that outcropping, right there on the edge of the shore?" Jay asked, raising his voice over the wind's roar. "That's called Egg Rock. Looks like the footpath is flooded out today. That's not always an island. Next time, we'll hike it."

"Egg Rock," Daisy muttered within her furs. "Now you're just being cruel."

"No, that's what it's called," I reassured her, giving Pam a wink. "There's an inscription on it dating to eighty-five. It commemorates some rather tragic local history."

Pam stepped up beside Jay at the prow, squinting into the fierce blue sky. "That's to do with the Indians," she said sadly. "We wiped them all out."

"Thoreau and Emerson used to sit out there," I said.

We'd been blessed with bright, stiff wind for our passage. Pam had shrieked gleefully when Jay had told her I hadn't meant what I'd said about us taking the train; he'd sail us out on the yacht he'd mentioned, which was, in fact, ours. I hadn't had the heart to reproach him for his joke regarding the owner some days before; Pam's delight at the surprise had far outweighed Jay's sly deception.

He'd decided two years back that my scribbling had grown just famous enough to merit rewarding with a vessel (and it better have done, I'd pointed out at the time, as it was mainly _my_ profits that were footing the bill).

"Mother, I'm running away," Pam said, turning to Daisy. "I'm going to come live with Uncle Nick and read his entire library, and Jay's going to teach me how to sail."

"Not if you know what's good for you, precious," Daisy replied. "You know you're to take up a place at Spence in the autumn. You want for some manners."

"Well, good," said Pam, defiantly, pitching over to lean beside me against the railing. "That's in New York, isn't it? There are plenty of trains to Boston."

"You'd better go to school," I told her. "None of the colleges will accept you otherwise. But you're welcome to come up here on weekends. I'll even send a car if you like."

"No, I'll take the train," Pam insisted, her smile widening in the face of her mother's barely concealed horror. "I _like_ trains. They're very romantic. Aren't they, Jay?"

Intent at the ropes, Jay hummed noncommittally, but he was smiling with her.

"College?" Daisy echoed warily. "Who said anything about college?"

"I did," Pam told her. "People up here believe girls have got brains."

"You'll never get a husband that way. A clever girl is a single girl."

"Then I hope I'm a regular genius," said Pam, leaning against my shoulder.

Backed by that impossible expanse of sky, Jay was watching us with his usual intense gravity.

I loved him all the more for it—and, much to my dismay, I loved Pam, too.

 

**_À Notre-Dame_  
30 March 1934**

"Oh, all these bells!" said Pam, in amazement. "Uncle Nick, just _listen_."

The three of us occupied a little bench near the hedge-maze in the gardens. As none of us were Catholic, the Good Friday clamor was perhaps, symbolically, a touch lost. Pam removed her hat and scooted forward, face tilted upward, knees daringly exposed. Her pale hair scarcely brushed her earlobes, which sported dangling pearls.

"I'm not the churchgoing sort, but if I was, I'd content myself with these of a Sunday," I told her, but she was already lost in some world of her own.

The trip had been Jay's idea; we'd taken her to Canada during spring holidays the year before, and, charged with good behavior (she'd achieved no small notoriety as a prankster at school, often gracing the headmistress's office), we'd promised Europe as a sequel. From autumn through to term's end just the week before, her conduct had been pristine.

"Kind of place you'd want for weddings and funerals," Jay said. "Very proper."

At the thought of funerals, my blood ran cold. Ominous enough, facing the prospect of Jay's forty-fourth birthday and my forty-second soon after. We were fortunate, said Tom at the office, not to have many grey hairs between us; he and his house-mate, Amory—as much his husband, or so I had gathered, as Jay was mine—had only a few years on us and were both of them showing the salt-and-pepper scourges of time.

Strange, I'd told him once, to like someone called Tom after the first person I'd known by that name had so thoroughly sullied it. He'd suggested the four of us have drinks sometime. I'd told him Jay and I would like that.

He'd said Amory might take some winning over, having grown cautious of the bottle after indiscretions in his youth, but the promise of becoming acquainted with a novelist whose début he greatly admired (Tom had continued) ought to do the trick. I'd rubbed my neck in consternation, no false modesty, thinking of my _actual_ first manuscript under lock and key in the cellar.

"Not _my_ wedding," said Pam, with vehement sobriety. "I shan't be having one."

"You're fortunate enough that you'll be able to afford independence," I conceded.

"You never know, dear heart," Jay said, somehow the only person on earth who got away with addressing her by appellations just shy of Daisy's _precious_. "You might fall for someone. If that happens, you'll have a decision to make. If you're lucky, you'll meet a Harvard man who'll know the value of an educated lady."

Pam's eyes were fixed on the grass now instead of the sky, her hands folded tense.

"Even if I did," she said hesitantly, "I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't want me."

Exchanging concerned glances with Jay, I put a tentative arm about her shoulders.

"What in the world makes you say that? _Anyone_ would be lucky to have you."

"Do you remember those doctor's appointments last year?" asked Pam, her restless eyes hard and glittering. "The ones Mother had me telling you were all about measuring my growth, I mean since I've got almost as tall as Aunt Jordan? Well, that's a lie, and it's just rotten of me not to have said anything. There's a . . . " She hesitated, glancing first at Jay, as if to make sure he hadn't lost his sympathy, and then at me, with a cutting sincerity that only blood-kin with a common grievance could impart. "There's a problem," she said softly. "With me. Inside. Something's not right, or gone funny, or . . . I can't get from Mother what it is, and the doctor won't tell me no matter how I turn on the tears, or . . . look, I don't mean to be crude, but I think something's missing. The poke me and prod me like I'm one of their cadavers down at the medical school. Uncle Nick, I don't _bleed_. I shouldn't like books more than boys."

Jay responded first, silently squeezing her hand.

Meanwhile, my mind whirled, thoughts scrabbling at the edge of a memory that I couldn't quite pin down. "I liked books better than girls at your age," I said. "For that matter," I added, lowering my voice, "I probably liked them better than boys. Or anything else."

"They want to cut me open this summer," said Pam, numbly. "Just to see."

"Barbaric," Jay said, and then added, impossibly: "Surely your father won't allow it."

"Uncle Jay," Pam lamented, tears finally beginning to fall, "Daddy doesn't _know_."

That was when the memory clicked into place: Tom Buchanan and I drunk one evening in the boat-house with a clutch of uncouth medical students, _also_ drunk, over tomes full of what they termed _deviant_ case-studies with revelation of details to which the patients surely hadn't consented. Tom had been repelled; I hadn't said a word.

Pam had her father's quick eyes and decisive jaw, the latter only slightly softened . . .

"I got the head nurse at school to sneak me some books. She didn't prod me the same way mother's doctor does, didn't try to put . . . " She shook her head, and what she _didn't_ say gave me the first (and regrettably not _only_ ) urge I'd ever had to punch someone's lights out. "She's been at Spence for forty years, and she said there was a girl like me back in ought-seven. Tall, too, and no monthlies. She never did start."

"You're not worth any less," I told her. "You're just different. Do you understand?"

"I can't have babies, and I want to kiss Caroline," she whispered. "What do I _do_?"

"Whatever you damned well want," Jay said, leaning close. "You're richer than God."

Pam's eyes lit shrewdly beneath her tears, as if he'd flipped some kind of switch.

"You mean like Gladys Bentley at the Ubangi?" she said. "Do you really think so?"

"Oh, dear heart," he said, tenderly brushing her pale, damp cheek, "I _know_ so."

We got back to Boston three days before Pam was due back at school. Once we'd all bathed, had a full night's sleep, and eaten breakfast, I phoned Daisy while Jay distracted Pam with some knot-tying exercises. She loved sailing.

"It's not right, what you plan to do to her," I said. "Whatever it's called, what she's got, it's not life-threatening. People survive that kind of thing."

"Tell it to her father, Nicky," Daisy challenged. "You tell Tom his baby girl's got the wrong parts in the wrong place." She took a shaky breath, and I could imagine the curl of her cigarette smoke toward the arched, elegant ceiling. "He's got to think she's having her appendix out. Doctor Connor says that's the only way."

"You're not letting them operate," I said, "because she's not coming home."

"I _beg_ your pardon?" snapped Daisy, coldly. "So it's come to this, has it?"

"She's never home anyway, and she gets into all kinds of trouble at school. You'd just as soon run around with Jordan while Tom sees that senator's wife on the sly. It'd be the most convenient thing that ever happened to you, Daisy. I've never been more useful to you than I am now. Refuse, and I'll see to it some ghosts of _yours_ rise."

The silence that fell between us over the distance and the wire was profound, unholy.

"It would be for her own good," said Daisy, feigning martyrdom. "That way, Tom need never find out. By the time she's through college or whatever the hell you plan to do with her once she's finished at Spence, she'll have met somebody, and I guess he need not ever know she's barren till he's ten years married to her and . . . "

"You'll send her money," I told Daisy sternly. "And keep her in the will. I can afford this, don't get me wrong, but you brought her into this world, and that carries a hefty price."

"Tell me, Nicky—is she what you always wanted, or what you always wanted to _be_?"

"Goodbye, Daisy," I said, and hung up. My family was waiting for me in the kitchen.

 

**In Tower Courtyard  
29 September 1936**

"Another pagan holiday, and here we are together again," said Pam. "How vulgar."

"We'd have gone to Normandy if not for this interview of yours," Jay told her while I stood some distance ahead at the foot of the stone stairs and peered down through the trees. I turned my back on Lake Waban and looked on this tableau instead: Pam elegant in black poplin and heels with Jay, clad in new-season Savile Row from head to toe, on her arm. Fresh autumn sunlight gilded it all—the sundial, the flagstones.

"I feel those old bats in Admissions are suitably impressed," said Pam, moving slowly down the stairs more on account of her shoes than for Jay's benefit, "and they ought to be. I'm top of my class, disciplinary marks be damned."

"You look great here," I said, grinning madly up at her. "It's meant to be."

"This school has a fine rowing team," Jay said, indicating the magnificent view I'd been considering only moments before. "You ought to try for it."

Pam let go of his hand and descended the last few stairs, almost tripping in her hurry. She grabbed my arm and turned me back toward the water, indicating the well-beaten path. "They say if you walk three times around the lake with a fellow, you'll marry him," she said. "So I'd better not walk with you. Uncle Jay, what do you think?"

"I think I'd better take Nick for a long walk," Jay said, accepting me from her as graciously as a groom might his bride. "As for legalities, we'll worry about that later."

"Maybe they'd do it in Montréal," suggested Pam, winking. "Now, you crazy kids run along. I've got to go meet those girls I met; we're going out to lunch in town."

"You meet us at the train station at seven, do you understand?" Jay said.

Pam appealed to me with a mock-pout.

"I can just stay over with one of them in the dorms! Nobody will know, and I'll be home by mid-afternoon tomorrow—"

"You're due back at Spence on Friday," I reminded her with reluctance. "Winter finals are looming on the horizon. It would be unwise to skive off now. Think of how hard you worked on your application to this place. Think of your interview."

Only thirty minutes out of it, that was very likely all Pam _could_ think of.

"You're as stuffy as Daddy says you were at Yale," she said. "Old bookworm."

"Don't let him fool you," Jay said. "He's anything but. He came to my parties all the time, of course, and there was one morning back in the summer of twenty-two, before he and I met, when I looked out my window and saw—"

"That's enough," I said, shoving my hands in my pockets as I started out along the path. "Corrupt her with lies as much as you like. Treat the girls to lunch, for all I care, and regale them with our Long Island days. It's too nice a day to fuss. I'm walking."

"You sound so much like Mother when you talk like that," said Pam, wistfully.

"Look here, dear heart, _go_ ," Jay said, nudging her back toward the stairs. "Your stuffy old uncle will be all right. I'll see to it he doesn't fall in the lake and drown."

Pam paused at the top of the stairs and glanced back at us, radiant as arriving October. She blew one kiss, a second, a third—and then, hobbling out of shoes that dangled magically at her wrists a moment later, was gone.

 

**On Pinckney Street  
31 December 1938**

"You Yale boys are all the same!" Amory shouted from his vantage point on the dining-room table, Perrier-Jouët in hand. He waved it at me in accusation. "Even your evening-dress smacks of the country club—ain't it so, Boswell?" he appealed to Tom.

"Never more so than now, my dear Johnson. For Christ's sake, goopher, get _down_."

I shrugged and left, half-filled flute in hand, working against the crush to find my way back to the living-room. We'd held our first New Year's bash the year after I started at the _Globe_. It had been the highlight of my co-workers' calendar ever since.

Jay was still engaged in deep conversation with my boss, Taylor, who ardently wanted Jay to renovate _his_ yacht after seeing firsthand what a bang-up job he'd done on ours. I caught his eye only briefly, nodded, and turned to find out who'd stumbled elbow-first into my back. It was Taylor's wife, Miranda, already in her cups, being inexpertly waltzed around the floor by a starry-eyed copy editor from Advertising.

Finding my glass empty (for I'd been sipping the whole way), I briefly contemplated shoving my way back into the dining-room to join Amory on the table. This idea was fortuitously killed in its cradle by the doorbell's abrupt, insistent chiming.

I found Pam glittering from hair to ankle on the front stairs, and, beside her, a devastatingly attractive young woman in with dark skin and vivid greyish blue eyes. Pam had mentioned Sylvie Saint-Germain on the odd weekend visit home, but those had been few and far in between.

She was enjoying her second year immensely.

"You took the train all the way from Wellesley on a night like this?" I asked.

"Rumor has it there's a pair of over-the-hill Princeton boys here who love to drink," Pam said, stepping up to kiss my right cheek—"but that they're really only interested in each other, which is a shame"—and then my left. "Any thoughts?"

"One of them's on the dining-room table," I said, offering Pam's companion my hand. "You're welcome to him." Sylvie took hold of my hand, and I brought hers up to my mouth. "You must be Miss Saint-Germain. Any friend of Pam's is a guest of honor."

"She says you wouldn't let her come last year," Sylvie murmured. "So, all things being equal, in addition to ourselves being a year older, we decided we'd just turn up."

"That's sensible," I told her, and stepped back to hold the door wide open. "Come in, ladies, come in. Drinks are in the kitchen, so help yourselves."

To the best of my recollection, Sylvie owed her striking appearance to a mixed-blood New Orleans Creole mother who'd happily wed far below her station to an immigrant Swiss cobbler. I thought of Tom Buchanan's inevitable apoplexy and was marvelously comforted.

Pam had already found Jay and was hanging off his neck like she hadn't seen him in months (which, to be fair—she hadn't come home since early November). I hovered nearby to overhear Sylvie's introduction, which went as most first introductions to Jay Gatsby tend to go: never once was he anything but Gatsby in my eyes at these soirées, rendering that erstwhile incarnation's rarity so much the richer.

Pam left Sylvie with Jay, who had made her the sole focus in his immediate orbit, and came over to stand beside me with a cigarette already perched between her lips. "Mother was in love with Jay once, wasn't she, Uncle Nick?" she said in low, incisive tones, disturbing my reverie. "She was in love with him, and you stole him away."

Speechless, I thought this over for a few seconds. Jay glanced my way and smiled.

"That . . . actually, yes, that's about the shape of it," I said. "The short version."

"You'll have to tell me the long version one of these days," she said, producing a gold-plated cigarette case from her clutch, which she sprung open right under my nose. "I found some interesting old newspaper clippings in the basement of Clapp."

"Is that so," I said with caution, gratefully taking one of the proffered smokes.

"You are the cleverest, insanest man alive," Pam whispered, ready with a match. "If you're the one who manipulated the New York press with just a few comments—which, courtesy of my research, I think you _are_ —I wonder why you didn't seize on what that Wilson woman's sister said and see to it Mother ended up behind bars."

Half a dozen puffs later, I was dizzy, supported by nothing but Pam's strong hands at my elbows.

"Because of you," I said. "I let it go for the simple fact that you _existed_."

If Jay wondered why Pam was hanging tearfully on _my_ neck by the time he and Sylvie decided to join us, he had enough restraint not to ask. I transferred Pam over to Sylvie and begged a moment alone with Jay. We made our way upstairs to the library, which had fortunately been vacated by whichever couple had most lately taken sanctuary there. As a rule, if the door was locked, it was wise not to stand knocking.

"She's put two and two together," I said, securing the door behind us. I tested the doorknob just to make sure it wouldn't budge. "She knows who you are, and she knows what her mother did. She wanted to know why I hadn't seen Daisy hang for it."

"I hope she's grateful," Jay said. "Her life would've been much worse if you had."

"Well, she's in tears just now," I said leaning against the spine-lined shelves that passed for a wall. "There's suspecting something, and there's getting confirmation."

"Maybe she read your editorial on what's happening in Europe, old sport," Jay suggested, taking what was left of my cigarette. "This Hitler situation's got a lot of people on edge," he added, and puffed it down to nothing. "She might be afraid Uncle Sam will send us packing again; she doesn't realize we're too old now."

"Oh, good God," I said. "I hadn't thought of that. She's probably worried sick."

I started toward the door, but Jay set a hand on my shoulder, held me in place. "I miss these nights," he said. "I dream of it sometimes: the entire house a glorious, shimmering crowd, but the only face I can see in the midst of it is yours."

"Then let's add May Day and Midsummer to the rota," I suggested, only half joking.

Jay leaned close, pinning me against the reassuring solidity of bound, printed matter. "It's times like this I wish I hadn't been so blind right at the start," he said, one finger tracing an imaginary line from just beneath my ear down to my collarbone, his thumb deftly loosening both bow-tie and buttons on the way. "No—blind's not the word I'm looking for; it was always just like my dreams, I watched you from the first moment I saw you, because I liked looking at you almost instantly. What I mean to say is, if I hadn't been so set on Daisy, so goddamned deep in _denial_ —"

"Shut up, Jay," I said. "Don't think I didn't know. Your insistence that I should use your beach as often as I liked was honestly the last straw. Did you enjoy the view?"

"If I told you what I thought about while I watched you—what I _did_ —"

"God," I said, heedless of just how many of my clothes he'd removed. " _Do_."

"I told myself it was better than thinking of anyone else," he said. "Safer."

"Now you're getting colder," I said. "Nobody likes to be a poor substitute."

"You weren't," Jay said, shirt and trousers undone. "I just didn't know it."

There was a certain nervous difficulty to the first ten minutes or so of our rushed trysts, always, what with raucous glee drifting up from downstairs and little else to lean against but books. The desk was annoyingly small, but somehow I ended up there flat on my back with all four limbs wrapped around Jay to the frantic rhythm of some improvised scherzo on the piano downstairs. Thomas Parke D'Invilliers had mentioned he could play, but he'd neglected to specify he was just shy of a goddamned virtuoso. Amory Blaine would have elaborated, I supposed deliriously.

Unexpected, that Jay had come undone when I'd done little else than kiss his cheek.

"Stay right where you are," I whispered, already lost. "Goddamn it, Jay, don't _move_."

We'd managed to clean up and re-dress just to the point our collars needed tending when the door miraculously unlocked itself with a momentous, unannounced _click_. Jay and I stared at the young women in the doorway, one of whom had the key from the top drawer of our bedside table dangling from her wrist by its threadbare ribbon.

"Gosh, I'm sorry," Pam said, offering me the key as if in apology. "You shouldn't have shown me where you kept it if you didn't intend for me to ever actually _use_ —"

"It's fine," I sighed, abashed, accepting the key. "Don't mention it. You're bored?"

Pam exchanged sheepish looks with Jay. "Those friends of yours from the office made a big, fake show coming on strong—yes, I _know_ I made a joke about them on my way in, but honestly, do you think I'd even _kiss_ somebody who went to Princeton? We couldn't hear ourselves think over the piano, so I thought we'd come up here."

"Room's free," Jay said, restoring his bow-tie with practiced ease. "It's yours."

Sylvie was studying the shelves and the remainder of our dishevelment with delight.

"Sweetie, is that why you brought me here?" she asked Pam. "To show me that even cool-cat white boys are down with Boston marriage? I already knew _that_ ," she said, and leaned in to kiss the corner of Pam's rouged mouth. "Sure, I'll shack up with you on Charles Street someday, but aren't our rooms in Severance good enough for now?"

"Yes," Pam sighed. "Yes, as long as we've got two years left. I _suppose_."

"I know your Daddy would pay for it in a tick, but I love the view we've got."

"You can see the courtyard?" I asked while Jay neatly reconfigured my collar.

"No sir, Mr. Carraway," said Sylvie. "We've got clear sights on the Green."

"Then you must be in one of those spacious turret suites," Jay said. "Superb."

"Why don't you show me where you sleep when you're home?" Sylvie asked Pam.

"We'd better get back downstairs," I said hastily. "We've been bad hosts."

"Never, Uncle Nick," Pam said. "Not you, either," she told Jay, winking.

They left us standing alone in the library with the door hanging wide open.

"Have we done the right thing, do you think?" Jay asked. "Taking her in?"

"It was your idea in the first place," I reminded him. "May I have this dance?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who hadn't pieced it together, Pam's particular variant is [CAIS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome).


	6. Breathing Dreams

I would like to think that our modest boat has done a better job than most of withstanding the inexorable current of year upon year, decade upon decade—but I'm not so arrogant as to believe us immune to heartache. I've learned by hard example.

We followed the progress of Europe's new war with tight-lipped horror, morning after morning, determinedly finishing our breakfast. As bombs fell on Berlin and London and Warsaw, Pam's third and fourth years at Wellesley passed without incident. She came home most weekends, lest we should vanish while she wasn't looking—sometimes with Sylvie in tow, and sometimes alone. Daisy came to stay for a few days over Christmas in 1940, which surprised me, given the rocks on which we'd foundered.

Pam was on track to graduate in June of 1941, at which point I realized with considerable distress that her parents would likely both be attending the Commencement proceedings. Jay, with that air of calm, long-suffering acceptance he'd developed, said there was nothing for it.

The ceremony and its attendant festivities were held on a humid, sweltering afternoon that, at least in climate, reminded me of nothing so much as the ill-fated day on which we'd all piled into Tom's coupé and Jay's Kissel and had let irritable hatred do the rest.

We'd seen Pam off with her class-mates earlier that morning, leaving them to their robing and their line-up, before taking our seats inside the vast tent with its dignified platform stage and podium. The tent had filled with a steady, gradual hum, and I doubt I would have noticed the Buchanans' arrival if not for Daisy's unbidden laughter several rows ahead of us. Even then, her voice had retained its compelling music.

"Tom hasn't aged well, has he, old sport?" Jay asked in low, satisfied tones.

I nodded by way of agreement, too displeased to speak. Some part of me had been hoping he'd find it in his heart to stay away, but even I knew the measure of affection he rightly bore his daughter. Thicker about the middle and possessed of a woefully thinning pate, he coughed his way through Karl Taylor Compton's dignified address. We might have remained under Tom's radar for a little while longer if not for the fact that we, like Tom and Daisy, rose to applaud when Pam crossed the stage.

That surreptitious glance over his shoulder was the first time in nineteen years he'd set eyes on me—and, come to it, the first time in nineteen years he'd set eyes on Jay.  The moment was worth replaying in my mind's eye for the depth of Tom's astonished distaste for the sheer, affable cheek of Jay's warmly offered smile and wave.

"He'll murder us afterward over champagne and cocktails," I said under my breath, my eyes fixed on the stage while all of us applauded.

Pam blew two hurried kisses, grabbed her diploma, and, shoeless, dashed across.

"I don't think so. Not on his little girl's big day," said Jay, firmly. "He wouldn't dare."

In the reception tent afterward, a moment I'd long been anticipating finally found us.

"You've got to swallow your pride and say hello," said Pam, dragging me along on one arm while Sylvie occupied the other. "Daddy will play nice. I made him promise." Jay followed close behind us, stiff and formal, not entirely immune to nerves after all.

"Mr. Carraway," Tom said, taking my hand in his cruel grasp and clapping my arm hard enough to leave a bruise. "You're looking well after all this time. My daughter's been taking good care of you, has she?" His eyes flicked over my shoulder, coming briefly to rest on Jay's features, and then past him as if he wasn't even there.

"No, don't be ridiculous," Pam said. "That's Jay's job. You know him, don't you?"

"Mr. Gatsby," sighed Tom, heavily, reaching past me to afford Jay only the curtest, briefest of handshakes. "Or whatever you've got people calling you these days."

"Gatsby?" Sylvie echoed, and then said, quickly when Pam elbowed her, " _Oh_."

"It's a pleasure to see you again," Jay said. "Under such auspicious circumstances."

"He may read big words, but that statement's a stretch," said Daisy under her breath, for my ears only. We'd reached an uneasy truce, and, in circumstances like these, blood tended to prove thicker than sweat. She fanned herself uneasily.

"Daddy, this is Miss Saint-Germain," Pam said, presenting him with Sylvie's hand, which she'd taken delicately in her own. "Mother met her at Christmastime."

Tom blinked at the woman next to his daughter as if seeing her for the first time. "Congratulations," he said, taking hold of her hand for the briefest of moments before unceremoniously letting it drop. "Very liberal-minded, these people up here."

Pam's fury was fierce, sudden, arm looped through Sylvie's quick as a snake-strike.

"Honored, I'm sure, Mr. Buchanan," Sylvie said, latching onto Pam just as tightly.

"Sylvie's a scientist," Pam said coolly. "Do you understand what that means, Daddy?"

"Against all odds, it means she's got a better chance at a pay-check than you do."

"I don't know," I told him, satisfied by the ferocious shade of red he'd turned. "Journalism's reliable, and there are more and more women in the business yearly."

"I've read your books," Tom said, his focus falling on me, as I'd hoped it would. "They're too short. Not much happens in them. Why don't you just write poetry?"

 _Oh, I do,_ I wanted to tell him, _but it's not for public consumption_. Instead, I valiantly ignored Jay's knowing quirk of a grin and said, "The critics certainly seem to appreciate my brevity. If I went on any longer, they'd never compliment me again."

"You're not intellectual enough," said Daisy, winking. "You've got too much heart."

"I'd rather his heart than a head full of nonsense," said Sylvie, yawning. "Sweetie, we'd better get out of here before too long. We've got a train to catch."

"Pam says you're going out of town for the weekend," said Daisy, looking me straight in the eye. "All four of you. Something by way of a graduation present?"

"We promised Pam a trip out to Long Island," Jay said before I could respond, and I was grateful of the intervention. "She'd like to see our old stomping grounds."

"Good luck finding anything worth the trip," Tom scoffed. "It's stomped to bits." With that, he set a hand on his daughter's shoulder and kissed her forehead. "I'm proud of you, baby girl. Be careful running around with these people—do you hear me?"

"I will," Pam promised him. "Uncle Nick's just so full of stories. I want to _see_ them."

"You will," Jay told her. "Wonders upon wonders. Nobody else can show them better."

As the girls dashed off to find Sylvie's parents, the four of us stood drinking in silence.

We'd booked rooms at the Garden City Hotel from that evening through to Sunday, which made it more of a week's get-away than just a weekend jaunt. Pam and Sylvie spent the first twenty-four hours shut up against all comers, which was just as well, given how much rest Jay and I needed now between bouts of our own exertions.

"They're worse than we were in Montréal," I said, resting my forehead against Jay's cheek. "Didn't think it was possible." I found his scar with my fingertip, circling it.

"They'll have to come out tomorrow morning whether they like it or not," Jay said, shifting fully onto his back so I could sprawl on top of him. "We've arranged for the car to West Egg, and there's no rescheduling it." He arched appreciatively in response.

"We might've been worse on the ship," I said, kissing his neck. "Or on the train."

"As far as I'm concerned, you're twice as bad now," Jay said; I rewarded him for it.

At ten o'clock the next morning, we waited patiently outside their door with several empty bottles for company (two Louis Roederer Cristal and one Château d'Yquem, both varieties of 1921 vintage—Tom and Daisy must have given her a staggering sum for graduation). They emerged looking elegant and collected, if languorously weary. They kissed us good morning and asked if we'd slept well. We both agreed that we had.

"Let's see this legendary old neighborhood of yours," said Pam, yawning behind her left hand.

Something winked there in the hallway's low light, glittering cold stones in a white gold or platinum setting. The delicate band of diamonds was Tiffany, at a guess, and I wondered if the fortune belonging to Sylvie's heiress mother was to blame.

"Not without breakfast," said Sylvie, beckoning us down the hall. "My treat, boys."

"We've only got an hour till the car arrives," I reminded them. "We'd better hurry."

"No, the driver had better _wait_ ," Sylvie replied, "given what I'm willing to pay him."

From start to finish, breakfast in the hotel restaurant only took forty minutes. The girls' demeanor was much improved once they'd eaten, although I'd seen Pam with a hangover sufficiently often to know she was still feeling the previous two nights' revels. Our hired driver was a stoic sort who didn't speak much. Combined with the girls' dozing and pensive silence on Jay's part and on mine, the ride was eerily quiet.

Just as the taxi pulled up in front of my run-down former residence, Jay glanced back at me from the front seat. I shook Pam, whose head had lolled onto my shoulder. "We're here," I said. "Or what passes for it, at least. You'd better wake Sylvie."

A kind of sleepy amazement settled on us there in the neatly swept lane, an unearthly silence settling as the car drove away. The tiny cottage was only slightly more run-down than I remembered it, the upkept walkway and trimmed white roses on the trellis meager signs of present habitation.

Pam led the way around the periphery, as if somnabulant: her sturdy, heeled shoes left footprints in the rain-softened uncut grass.

Sylvie stepped past Jay and me, catching Pam's elbow. "Honey, what do you see?"

"Mother wasn't lying, I suppose," she said. "It's a shack, all right, but it's adorable."

I stopped, watched them continue ahead, unable to address Jay's questioning hum.

"We ought to go around the front," I said, "and apologize to the current resident."

"You don't look well, old sport," Jay said, but he followed. "We shouldn't have come."

Before he could catch up, I'd dashed up the front stairs and knocked on the door.

The weathered face of the woman who answered passed from fear into disbelief.

"Mister Nick," she said, disbelieving, her accent worn down by decades. "Is it . . . "

Jay was quick to step in, and with more grace, too, than I could have mustered.

"We're sorry to trouble you, Madame Vehko," he said, hat in hand. "Yes, it's us."

Filled with humility and tact, Jay's choice of honorific, what when I'd never known the woman's marital status, let alone her surname. I wondered how he'd discovered it. She fell on me first, and then on Jay, an armful of tear-misted Finnish endearments.

"Those pretty ladies in the back—ah, I'm happy! They are your wives, surely, yes?"

"No," I said. "The blonde is my niece, Pam, and the other girl's her friend Sylvie."

"Very very tall girl," said Magda, approvingly. "Tall, just like Finnish girls. Strong."

"It's absolutely wonderful to see you again," Jay said, smiling. "May we come in?"

For the next hour and a half, all four of us endured strong, unmilked black tea and stale butter cookies at the hands of my sometime housekeeper. Admittedly, Magda's willingness to chatter saved Jay and me a great deal of trouble. Her perspective capped the events of summer 1922 with a rose-tinted, wry lens of innocence.

"They left me," concluded Magda, finally, on her third cup of tea. "No warning, I tell you, but a note on the table and some money. Fortunately, _very_ much money." I glanced sidelong at Jay, who, lowering his eyes, coughed politely into his hand.

"So it was off to Montréal, then," said Pam, tilting her head at us, lips slightly quirked. "Off to Montréal and Québec City, England and France. What a time you must have had. Jay told me once that he found traveling romantic. _Was_ it, Uncle Nick?"

"Why are you asking me questions to which you already have answers?" I said.

"Kids will be like this," said Magda, turning to Pam. "Europe is always romantic."

"Paris in the springtime, sweetie," said Sylvie. "You've been there. You told me."

"Yes, I have," Pam sighed, slumping a little in her chair. "But not with _you_."

Magda rose and cleared the tray, which was the same I'd used to serve Jay and Daisy.

"You must go see the old house, Mister Jay," she said, returning. "It is not the same."

"I expect not," Jay said. "Not since I sold the place to Wolfsheim. Never the same."

"If this is Meyer Wolfsheim you mean, he's dead," Magda replied. "Eleven years gone."

"Who owns the place now?" I asked, too curious to hold my tongue. "Did he sell it?"

Magda shook her head darkly, wringing her wrinkled hands in her tea-stained apron.

"Is for sale," she said. "Always for sale. Rich men come and go, but never stay."

Jay nodded gravely in thanks and rose from his seat, his restless eyes on the door.

"We'll go and have a look at it, then," he said. "Show the girls for old times' sake."

"It was beautiful in my day," Magda said. "In Mister Nick's, too, and also in yours."

We all of us bade Magda a fond farewell, but she lingered over Jay the longest of all. 

What afternoon conversations they must have had in my work-trapped absence during those six weeks Jay and I had stayed, I couldn't guess, but he had clearly endeared himself to her for the remainder of her days. Moneyed or penniless, that was his way.

The front gate to the adjacent property was padlocked, but that didn't prevent Pam (seasoned boarding-school prankster that she was) from picking the lock with a pair of Sylvie's hair pins. We hauled the gates shut behind us.

Pam expertly re-wrapped the chain and snapped the lock back in place. I had a sense of distinct foreboding, being shut inside a place from which there was no escape but the risk of being seen along a private, posted stretch of beach—that or the sea. I didn't doubt we could swim for it if necessary, but I didn't relish the thought of returning to our hotel sopping wet.

"My goodness," Sylvie murmured as we crunched up the gravel drive. "What kind of a God-forsaken eyesore is this place, anyhow? Hot _damn_ , but you white boys are crazy."

"I might have chosen better at the time," Jay admitted, "but it's location I was after."

None of the locked entrances yielded to Pam's dormitory approach, but, ever resourceful, she found a cellar window that boasted an ominously large crack. Without so much as asking (or, I suspect, _expecting_ our approval), she sat down in the grass and shattered what was left of the dusty glass with one swift, exacting kick. "Ladies first," she said smugly, extending one grass-stained hand to Sylvie.

The interior was a solid murk of dust-moted, humid darkness. Pam and Sylvie vanished down half-remembered corridors, their ghostly laughter echoing off the high ceilings and down to where Jay and I stood in the staircase-wreathed gallery that had once housed his wardrobe and bed. It was empty now, save for dust and detritus, dappled with afternoon sunlight from the shuttered windows high above.

"I almost can't breathe in it," I said, at a loss. "And I still don't know what to say."

"I didn't expect you to say anything, old sport," Jay sighed. "You liked it. Daisy didn't."

"Do you ever wonder what would've happened if we could've stayed here?" I asked, pacing a wide circle from where Jay stood at the heart of it all, the still point's center. "If Wolfsheim taking it all hadn't been the only way. If you could've kept it."

Jay shook his head, hands in pockets, and stared at the floor.

"You were right all along," he said. "We had to leave. Things would only have gotten worse."

Sensing some ageless wistfulness in him, I paced the circuit again and then returned to stand as close as I dared. "I know that's how it would have been," I whispered, "but I dream those nights just like you do. I see the cars and the crowds; I hear the music even now. I wish I'd stayed with you long past sunrise. I never got to use the pool. I might have seen that lunatic coming. Jay, I wish I had stayed. I swear that I _never_ —"

He kissed me and the world seemed to freeze, suspended in that moment: ripples of might-have-beens lapped at the edges of our universe and back again, dashed and grounded and made new by Pam's low-voiced, echoing intrusion from the gallery.

"This place is haunted, Uncle Nick!" she called. "We're going outside! I need air!"

Jay didn't stop kissing me until both sets of footfalls far above us had retreated.

"Let's go find them outside," he said. "A stroll on the beach will calm everybody."

"Wait a minute," I said, staying him. "There's something I always wanted—"

"Of _course_ I loved you too," Jay said. "Every moment she was slipping from my grasp, every moment my doubt grew stronger, I loved you both—I know now what she meant by that. She loved _me_ too, but Tom more and more, every waking hour. How could I admit to understanding that, Nick, back then with everybody watching?"

"You couldn't," I said. "You couldn't have done it, Jay, and I don't blame you."

"Good," he said, dragging me by the hand, turning his head as he led us on toward daylight. "Because you meant more than all of this, more than what I couldn't reach."

We emerged misty-eyed to the sun's merciless glare off the waves and Sylvie pointing urgently toward the water.

The dock was as it had always been. "I told her she'd better not go out there, but she wouldn't listen," said Sylvie. "What if those old timbers have rotted through? Your Pam's a pretty fool. I hope she can swim."

"She can," Jay said, scrambling up the side stairs before I could. "In waves much rougher than this, I made sure of that."

Sylvie helped me up the stairs after him, and by the time we got to the top, he had already reached the point where concrete gave way to wood, shouting: "Pam, whatever you think you're doing, you'd better . . . " His voice died at the sight as surely as my own would have done.

Pam had turned from where she stood at the dock's farthest end to stare back at us, her pale hair ablaze, with blue sky and high cirrus clouds and the Sound shimmering beyond her for miles. She extended one sure hand to us—a peace offering, safety, so we went.  And should you outlive us, dear reader, please promise me this: that you will crack open the heart of even _this_ ending, and find what waited patiently for us there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Optional Shakespearean Interlude:[ _Actions We Might Play_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1065723)**
> 
> As you may have noticed, a number of the titles in this series (all _except_ for "Naming Things" and "Miraculous Escapes") were taken from snippets of Fitzgerald's text in the novel (to which I owe many thanks). In this case, I feel the source-quote is worth giving, because so much of the positive premise of this entire series rests upon it in spite of its ominous quality:
> 
> _No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o’clock—until long after there was anyone to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true, he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees._
> 
> — _The Great Gatsby_ , Chapter Eight


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